Filmmaker Sudz Sutherland tells exile tales in Home Again

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      How would you feel if you had lived almost all your life in Canada, but were deported to a foreign country where you faced employment barriers, homelessness, starvation, rape, and even death?

      It’s a prospect that hit too close to home for filmmaker Sudz Sutherland and his wife, producer-screenwriter Jennifer Holness. On the line from Toronto, Sutherland explains that Holness discovered that a childhood friend, whose early life paralleled her own—of coming to Canada as a young child, reuniting with a mother, and growing up here—had been killed after being deported to Jamaica. He had gotten involved in petty crime, which escalated until he was deported. He had just begun to turn his life around after 10 years in Jamaica when he was murdered.

      “That was the impetus for the story,” Sutherland says of his dramatic feature Home Again, which opens on Friday (March 22).

      Sutherland, who directed the TV miniseries Guns and the feature film Love, Sex, and Eating the Bones, says they first approached the National Film Board of Canada to make a documentary, but their proposal was declined. The NFB later supported them to do research in Jamaica for a film. The couple found 40 deportees to interview in Kingston and Ocho Rios (where Sutherland’s parents are from; Sutherland was born in Canada), through a drug-rehabilitation program.

      Listening to their stories was “incredibly hard”, Sutherland says.

      “One guy, it was like I was staring in a mirror.…He grew up where I grew up, in Scarborough. And all his references were Canadian, like Eaton Centre and the Ex [Canadian National Exhibition]…he was a Sunshine Boy [a Toronto tabloid beefcake shot]—all these kinds of things.…What we looked at was people who had emigrated as children…to their adoptive countries, but for one reason or another their parents never got them citizenship, so when they did run afoul of the law, instead of a slap on the wrist, now it’s exile…and homelessness.”

      Home Again follows three characters who are deportees in Jamaica: Marva (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s Tatyana Ali), caught as an unwitting drug mule for an ex-boyfriend, is wrenched from her two Canadian-born children and faces an uncertain life with resentful relatives. The 21-year-old Everton (Stephan James), deported from Britain for possession of a few joints, finds his private-school education hasn’t prepared him for street life. Meanwhile, New York City drug dealer Dunston (Rookie Blue’s Lyriq Bent) gets quickly drawn into Kingston’s vicious underworld.

      Sutherland wanted to expose what lies behind the façade of a tourist’s experience of Jamaica at an all-inclusive resort. “All the things we all take for granted—talking to a deportee puts all that stuff into perspective,” he says.

      The film’s release follows recent debates over the controversial Bill C-43. The Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act would reduce the number of appeals that refugees, permanent residents, and visitors can make for crimes with punishments of six months or more in jail. Critics, including MP Elizabeth May, have raised concerns about the powers that it would give the immigration minister. (A petition against the bill is available at the Home Again website: www.homeagainfilm.com/.)

      Ultimately, Sutherland wants to give voice to Jamaica’s deportee population, which now numbers around 34,000, seven times the country’s prison population.

      “They wanted to talk about this. They want to get this issue out there. They wanted to be heard,” he says. “We’re trying to get this story right.”

      Watch the trailer for Home Again. 

      Comments

      5 Comments

      If you can't take the heat..

      Mar 21, 2013 at 8:35am

      If a country lets you in, and you repay them by disobeying their laws, why should they tolerate you staying?

      Mpdman

      Mar 21, 2013 at 7:44pm

      I think Jim Carrey said it best as a lawyer in his Liar Liar opus. His criminal defendant asked him how to stay out of jail.
      Carey answered: "QUIT BREAKIN' THE LAW A-HOLE!!!"

      That's the best way to not get deported. Coulda saved a lot of money on that movie....

      Diva

      Mar 27, 2013 at 5:19pm

      I just watched the film on Wednesday March 27, and I would not know how to survival if I was deportee. The crime is our immigration laws in Canada. The punishment should suit the crime. Everton being deported back for a few joints, and force to homeless. My heart was filled so much pain. I didn't this was going to Jamaican immigrants. Thank you for educating me.

      We all Must do whatever it takes to have these laws change. The crimes must suit the punishment!!

      Diva

      Mar 27, 2013 at 5:24pm

      I need to edit my comment. How can I do that? 1) force to be homeless. 2) My heart was filled with so much pain.
      3) I didn't know this was happening to Jamaican immigrants. 4) these laws changed.

      Nicole

      Apr 17, 2013 at 4:43am

      I watched the film in Toronto. I was disappointed as a Jamaican to see so many non Jamaicans depicted in the film, it's a turn off. I am sure they could have found Jamaicans to play even the minor roles. It does not comes off as authentic. The film is about people that were deported to Jamaica, yet it was filmed in Trinidad. Why not make the movie about deportees from Trinidad instead of using Jamaica to sell the film. If Sudz/Holness really wanted to help then the film should have been shot in Jamaica and put some of those deportees in it.