The role of a lifetime. Citizen Penn chronicles the moment Sean Penn and a team of volunteers landed in Haiti just days after a 7.0 earthquake struck in 2010 — and the ten years after. Directed by Don Hardy, the film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2020, with further screenings at AFI Fest and the Mill Valley Film Festival.
Citizen Penn chronicles the moment Sean Penn and a team of volunteers landed in Haiti just days after a 7.0 earthquake struck in 2010 and the ten years since, offering viewers an intimate, honest, and self-reflective look into the triumphs and challenges of a man who decided to do something.
The film follows Penn's humanitarian efforts in Haiti through J/P HRO — later CORE — from the earthquake's immediate aftermath through a decade of relief work. Drawing on Penn's own archival footage alongside firsthand accounts from the volunteers, aid workers, and Haitians he worked alongside, Citizen Penn traces an unlikely transformation: a Hollywood actor who arrived to help and stayed to build one of the country's most enduring disaster-relief organizations. It's a story about what accountability looks like when the cameras usually reserved for movie premieres turn instead toward a devastated tent camp — and what it costs, personally and politically, to keep showing up long after the news cycle moves on.
Tribeca Film Festival 2020 · AFI Fest 2020 · Mill Valley Film Festival 2020
- Director Don Hardy
- Producers Shawn Dailey, Don Hardy
- Executive Producers Ellen Fair, Kim Forbes Tramel, Dan Braun, Josh Braun
- Original Score Linda Perry
- "Eden: To Find Love" Written by Linda Perry & Bono, performed by Bono
