Film

Sentenced Home

Sentenced Home is a 2006 documentary by David Grabias and Nicole Newnham about three Cambodian American refugees from Seattle facing deportation.[1] The men had been convicted of crimes as teenagers, and the film follows them from the Seattle area to Cambodia.[2]

Background

Kim Ho Ma, Loeun Lun and Many Uch were born in Cambodia and came to the United States as small children, after their families fled the Khmer Rouge.[3][4] Each spent part of his childhood in refugee camps.[5] They were part of a large group of Cambodian refugees admitted in the early 1980s, given permanent resident status and resettled in public housing in inner-city Seattle, where they grew up as Americans.[1][2] As teenagers each joined a gang, committed a crime and served a sentence, and none became a U.S. citizen.[3][5]

In 1996, Congress expanded the list of crimes for which permanent residents must be deported.[3] Cambodia at first refused to take back people ordered deported, which left many in legal limbo.[3] After September 2001, the United States pressed Cambodia to change its policy.[4] In March 2002, Cambodia agreed to accept deportees, and the first planeload arrived in Phnom Penh that month.[3][2] The agreement capped the number accepted each year, which caused the delays seen in the film. As of 2006, about 1,500 Cambodian Americans were awaiting deportation.[3][2]

Synopsis

The film opens with a man looking across the water at Seattle, then cuts to the rice paddies of rural Cambodia.[5] Kim Ho Ma is days from deportation when the story begins, and he is the first of the three to be sent to Cambodia.[4][3] His lawyer, the Seattle federal public defender Jay Stansell, had won a 2001 Supreme Court case on indefinite immigration detention.[5] In Phnom Penh, Kim Ho tries to contain his anger at U.S. immigration law and at the lack of opportunity in the city.[1]

Loeun Lun, a family man with a full-time job, was held in immigration detention after he applied for citizenship.[4][3] The film records him saying goodbye to his wife and two young daughters on the day of his deportation.[2] In Cambodia he settles in Siem Reap, helps his grandmother and begins building a small house among the rice paddies.[5][1]

Many Uch coaches a Little League baseball team for Cambodian American children in Seattle while his own deportation remains unresolved.[1][4] During one game he pledges allegiance to the United States as he waits his turn to be deported.[2] Others who appear include Patricia Vroom of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Many's former teacher Bob Huppe, and Bill Herod of the Returnee Assistance Project in Cambodia.[3][5]

Production and credits

David Grabias and Nicole Newnham wrote, produced and directed the film, with Howard Shack as cinematographer.[5][6] Newnham learned of the deportations while producing a story on the Cambodian community in Boston for the National Geographic/PBS special Skin.[1] The filmmakers' discussion guide dates the start of the project to summer 2002, when they were working on another project in the Khmer community of Lowell, Massachusetts.[3] Jay Stansell introduced them to all three men.[3]

The filmmakers worked in a largely cinéma vérité style, kept the U.S. story in the Seattle area and made five trips to Cambodia.[3] The Southeast Asia Center gives the filming period as three years; the discussion guide says the film took more than three and a half years to make.[2][3] The film crosscuts between Seattle and Cambodia and alternates among the men's stories, with few interviews and little explanatory text.[5] Sentenced Home Productions produced it, with support from the Independent Television Service (ITVS).[7][3]

Before this film, Newnham co-produced the PBS documentary They Drew Fire and co-wrote its companion book.[1] Grabias's documentaries have aired on PBS, A&E, Discovery, FX and National Geographic.[1]

Release and reception

The film was released in the United States on February 25, 2006, and aired on PBS as part of Independent Lens and the PBS Indies / Global Voices strand.[7][2] The feature runs 73 minutes; the Independent Lens version runs 56 minutes.[7][5] In 2006 it screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive on March 19, with Newnham in person.[2][8] On June 12, 2006, it played the Seattle International Film Festival at the Egyptian Theatre, with Many Uch and Jay Stansell at the screening.[2] It won the audience award for best documentary at the San Francisco Asian American International Film Festival and was nominated for Outstanding Informational Programming at the 2007 News and Documentary Emmy Awards.[2][9]

Variety's review said the men face "double punishment," deported for crimes whose sentences they had already served.[6] On May 15, 2021, F.I.G.H.T. and the Khmer Anti-deportation & Advocacy Group (KhAAG) marked 15 years since the release with a virtual reunion, where all three men spoke on a panel about what had changed in their lives and in the anti-deportation movement. KhAAG credits the film with highlighting the injustices of the school-to-prison-to-deportation pipeline.[10]

Watch

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Independent Lens, Sentenced Home (PBS)
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 University of Washington Southeast Asia Center, Film: Sentenced Home
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 ITVS, Sentenced Home discussion guide
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Center for Asian American Media, Sentenced Home (September 25, 2018)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 Amherst Magazine, Sentenced Home (Amherst Creates, Summer 2007)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Variety, Sentenced Home (March 21, 2006)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 IMDb, Sentenced Home (2006)
  8. ↑ BAMPFA, Sentenced Home
  9. ↑ ITVS, Sentenced Home
  10. ↑ Khmer Anti-deportation & Advocacy Group, Sentenced Home: 15 years later
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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:42.