Belizaire the Cajun

Belizaire the Cajun
Directed by	Glen Pitre
Written by	Glen Pitre
Starring	Armand Assante
Release date	1986
Language	English

Belizaire the Cajun is a 1986 film starring Armand Assante.

It chronicles the story of Belizaire Breaux, a village healer (traiteur) in Acadiana in 1859, who becomes entangled in a violent conflict between Cajuns and the new Anglophone arrivals to Southwest Louisiana. Glenn Pitre, the writer and director, is a Cajun who went to Harvard and then came back home again to make movies. He now lives in Cut Off, Louisiana. His first movies were short dramas that he booked into the shopping center multiplexes of Cajun country. But he also brought them to film festivals such as Montreal and Cannes. Armand Assante anchors a notable supporting cast, particularly Will Patton, as the gentle son wounded by a bullying father, and Stephen McHattie, as the coolly evil Willoughby. It takes place in Louisiana in the years before the Civil War, after the long exile of the Cajuns in the Dominican Republic at last seemed over.