By John Corrado
The 2026 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 23rd to May 3rd in Toronto
In her documentary Black Zombie, director Maya Annik Bedward ties the modern zombie lore we see in horror movies and TV shows back to the history of Haiti and the ancient spiritual practice of Vodou.
Bedward traces the Westernized take on zombie mythology back to author William Seaback’s The Magic Island, a book largely rooted in racial stereotypes, and its 1932 film adaptation White Zombie. Seaback wrote the book after visiting Haiti, and seeing slaves working in the sugarcane fields during colonial times, with the Vodou belief being that bodies could be brought back from the dead and doomed to continue working in a zombified state.
It’s an interesting thesis for a documentary, even if Black Zombie occasionally feels more like it is about demystifying the practise of Vodou itself. But Bedward ties it back to how the idea of zombies came to be mainstreamed through popular culture and horror movies. Among the notable subjects is author and film historian Tananarive Due, who sheds light on the history of zombie portrayals in the media and African-American representation throughout cinema history.
This includes a lot of attention given to George A. Romero’s landmark 1968 horror film Night of the Living Dead, which popularized how we think of zombies today. Due notes that Romero’s film wasn’t initially written to have a Black protagonist, but the casting of actor Duane Jones in the leading role added a deeper layer of social commentary to it that ties neatly into this enjoyable documentary.
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