Southeast Asia Center
Monday June 12, 2006
7:00PM
Egyptian Theatre
Tickets can be purchased from the Seattle International Film Festival's website.
The film follows three young Cambodian Americans from the Seattle area. At the beginning of the film, all three men, in their mid-twenties, are eligible for deportation to Cambodia because of crimes they committed as teenagers. The film follows their heart-breaking sagas full circle-- from birth in the killing fields to an unwilling return decades later -- and explores the social, historical, and political reasons for their fate. The film has recently screened at the NY Museum of Modern Art, and won the audience award for best documentary at the SF Asian American International Film Festival. It will play as part of the PBS series "Independent Lens" in 2006.
Many Uch, one of the young men in the film, (the only one who has not yet been deported) will be at the screening, along with Jay Stansell, a federal public defender from Seattle who has been active in trying to stop the deportation of refugees from Southeast Asia.
Raised as Americans in inner-city Seattle, three Cambodian teenagers each made a rash decision that irrevocably shaped their destiny. Now as adults 20 years later, they find themselves caught between a tragic past and an uncertain future by a system that doesn’t offer any second chances. *SENTENCED HOME* puts a human face on U.S. deportation policy, following the heart-breaking sagas of these three Cambodian-Americans full-circle. The film reflects with them about their birth in the Killing Fields, their youth on America’s mean streets, and their struggles in courtrooms and prisons, and follows them through their unwilling return to Cambodia decades later.
Told in first-person narration, through the voices of the three deportees, their families and their friends, SENTENCED HOME interweaves their dramatic cinema-verité stories. Kim Ho Ma struggles to feel safe in a foreign country he doesn’t understand. Family man Loeun Lun fights to do the best he can for his kids and keep his marriage together from behind bars and across oceans. And an introspective Many Uch seeks to redeem himself, taking advantage of what time he has left in the U.S. before being deported to try and save today’s Cambodian-American youth from suffering his fate.
More than 1,500 Cambodians are waiting to be deported back to Cambodia. Like the men portrayed in SENTENCED HOME, they arrived in the U.S. as young children, part of a flood of Cambodian refugees admitted in the early 1980’s. Given permanent resident status and resettled in inner-city public housing projects, they grew up as Americans. Many committed gang-related crimes as teenagers, and served time in jail, afterwards trying to move on and make something of their lives. Although they never became U.S. citizens, they were not afraid of being deported. They were, after all, “permanent residents”, and Cambodia refused to accept deportees. But after September 11th, everything changed. The U.S. pressured Cambodia, and the first planeload of deportees arrived in Phnom Penh in March 2002.
Filmed over the course of three years, filmmakers David Grabias and Nicole Newnham have captured intimate moments that crystallize the raw emotion and human impact of deportation: Loeun Lun saying a painful farewell to his wife and two young daughters the day of his deportation; Kim Ho Ma turning to alcohol and drugs in Phnom Penh as a way to deal with his anger and hopelessness; and Many Uch proudly pledging allegiance to the United States during a baseball game, even as he waits for his turn to be deported.
SENTENCED HOME raises timely questions about immigration, civil rights, and cultural identity. America prides itself on the stories of immigrants who arrived on these shores with nothing but the shirt on their backs and made good. But what about the immigrants who fall between the cracks? Do they deserve a second chance? And how do we define what makes an American?
The film will be playing at the Seattle International Film Festival