It is early nineteenth-century in New Orleans. No longer are the classes of people simply divided between the oppressed black people and the over privileged white.
This is the story about the gens de couleur libre, the Free People of Colour. They live in between both the white and the black people, not fitting in either world, but very much a part of each.
The Feast Of All Saints shows the struggles the gens de couleur libre faced while trying to carve a future for themselves and their race. The men were allowed to be schoolled, many travelling to France to finish their education before coming back to New Orleans and many setting up businesses of their own. Then they were the women who were taken to the Mulato Balls to find white suitors whom they could never marry, but would live a life of privilege provided by the rich white plantation owners that would divide their time between their white lives and then the ones with their darker skinned mistresses.

 

Robert Ri'chard as Marcel Ste. Marie
Peter Gallagher as Philippe Ferronaire
Gloria Reuben as Cecile Ste. Marie
Jennifer Beals as Dolly Rose
Ossie Davis as Jean-Jacques
Ruby Dee as Elsie Claviere
Pam Grier as Suzette Lermontant
Jasmine Guy as Juliet Mercier
James Earl Jones as Older Marcel
Eartha Kitt as Lola Dede