Black Zombie director traces screen monster back to Haiti
The screen zombie began in Haiti, not Hollywood. That is the thread pulled by Black Zombie, the feature debut directed by Maya Annik Bedward, meaning her first full-length film. Ten years of work sit behind it.
Bedward talked through that history as a guest on Deadline's Doc Talk podcast, in an episode published on 15 September 2026, Deadline. The show is hosted by film-maker John Ridley and Deadline senior documentary editor Matt Carey. It is a production of Deadline and Ridley's Nō Studios. The September episode centres on her research and filming choices.
The documentary goes back to the zombie's roots in Haitian spiritual traditions. It connects that figure to slavery and colonialism, tracing how a belief system carried through enslavement was later picked up and changed by popular culture, as described in an exclusive trailer preview by People. No prior knowledge is needed. The film lays out the timeline from the start.
It reaches Hollywood in 1932 with White Zombie, an early studio horror built around a Haitian setting. Decades later, the cycle shifted again with Night of the Living Dead in 1968, a film that never actually uses the word "zombie". Those two markers help explain how far the screen version drifted from its source, Bedward told Deadline.
To close that distance, parts of Black Zombie were filmed on Hispaniola, the Caribbean island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Those sequences were shot in black and white. Bedward filmed them in the Dominican Republic rather than Haiti, keeping the production on the same island where the history began.
The project took ten years to bring to fruition. Bedward discussed that long build and the research behind it in a Deadline interview in August 2026 titled 'Maya Annik Bedward On Her Feature Debut Black Zombie', Deadline. Distributor Kino Lorber, the company that will handle its release, has acquired the documentary. The August conversation came before the September podcast appearance, charting the same decade-long path to the screen.
What makes this stand out is the reversal. For audiences who know zombies only as horror villains, Bedward returns the figure to Haiti and to real history. It helps viewers realise where the screen version came from.
