“I don’t know where to put these at all,” Trinity Copeland says as she’s unwrapping silverware at the start of “Exodus” where an empty new apartment can either look like it has the promise of a fresh start or the barren white walls and empty cupboards hold the intimidation of starting over from scratch, depending on your point of view. It’s easy for Trinity to fall into the despair of the latter perspective, settling into her first place where she’ll ever live on her own after being incarcerated from the age of 17 for the murder of her father after years of his abuse. She couldn’t have reasonably expected to get out of prison for years, but the implementation of a new law in New York, the Domestic Violence Survivors Act, cut her sentence down significantly, and released back into society still in her twenties, she has plenty of time to still make something of her life, though even the simple task of putting away knives and forks poses a challenge when she’s been away from it for so long.
In Nimco Sheikhaden’s moving documentary short, Copeland may be presented in monochrome, but little else about her situation is seen in black and white as she attempts to get her life back on track after her release from Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, reuniting with a family that can certainly understand why she did what she did but continues to hold complicated emotions towards it when it led to the death of their patriarch. Somehow her path seems a little more straightforward than that of Assia Serrano, the other former inmate that Sheikhaden follows all the way to Panama when her conviction led to her deportation after a 17-year prison stretch, yet much of her life remains in the States where her mother Tilsia raised Assia’s two children and they remain connected over FaceTime calls, but unlikely to actually see each other in person any time soon.
Although “Exodus” touches on the failures of the criminal justice system that led to generally unfair cases against both women, the film gives shape to ongoing consequences resulting from their sentences that weren’t a part of enforcing the law when both Trinity and Assia face so much uncertainty on the outside even after their legal woes are considered resolved by the state. Sheikhaden, with cinematographers Skyler Knutzen and Nancy Serna Guerrero, gives her main subjects grace and dignity with airy camerawork that centers them as a formidable presence in places where they may feel unwelcome, and also finds it as well when support systems start to emerge for both within their immediate families and organizations such as Survived and Punished that can offer some relief when it comes to legal concerns.
After premiering earlier this year at SXSW, the film is coming to Philadelphia this week to screen at Blackstar on August 1st, where it will also be made available to audiences worldwide virtually for the weekend, and Sheikhaden spoke about how a personal connection to the subject led her to explore what it’s like to actually get back on your feet after prison after time away, filming across continents and connecting Trinity and Assia both narratively and more directly.
How did this come about?
I was really thinking about the core ideas and issues of this film for a while, mostly because my fiance is currently incarcerated, so I was in deep consideration of what does life after look like, not only for him, but for us. It was a theoretical exercise in many ways, and that experience really shaped the film in many ways, but also, I had worked on films related to the criminal punishment system and it often positioned freedom as an end point. We spend so much time on the journey to get someone home, but then as soon as they were released, that was where the story was left off, and I knew that that wasn’t the case, so [“Exodus”] was just an effort for me to answer that question, knowing that freedom is not enough. The title of the film, “Exodus” speaks to that notion of the promised land that one can never really quite arrive at, and there were a lot of things that I was hoping to wrestle with in the film. For example, when one person in a family is incarcerated, it’s not just that individual that serves time, it’s anyone who loves or cares about that person. It’s an intergenerational issue with far-reaching consequences, and I’ve felt the effects of that personally, but I think also it’s true that these stories are often pushed to the margins, sensationalized and reduced to headlines and statistics. We live in a time where, unfortunately, true crime dominates, and there’s an appetite for that kind of spectacle, so I just was hoping to tell this story without erasing the real human cost. I hope “Exodus” is an alternative to that.
From what I understand, Trinity and Assia were both part of a photo series you came across. What led you to ask them to be the subjects of this?
I have to give a lot of credit to Sara Bennett, who was a public defender for 17 years and she started photographing women on the inside. I came across the photo series as I was thinking about the themes of this film, and I knew I also wanted to specifically focus on Black and brown women because I felt like these are already stories that exist on the margin, but the stories of Black and brown women exist in our periphery. So it was beautiful because her photo series didn’t specify the crime. It only focused on a quote that each of them would give, a few sentences of reflections about their dreams, their hopes, their regrets, or their day-to-day, and I was really struck by Trinity’s and Assia’s.
Also, I wanted to tell stories that were varied. Trinity’s a lot younger [than Assia]. She benefited from the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act and got 15 years shaved off her sentence, whereas Assia only got one year shaved off, and Assia was coming home in her forties versus Trinity coming home in her twenties, right, and Trinity’s [situation] oriented around a crime that directly impacted her own family — her mom and her brother also lost a loved one alongside her, so it was a really unique type of experience of someone who was going to be coming home to. Then Assia never actually got the proper family reunification. She never got to go back home to her mom or her kids. She was immediately sent to an ICE detention center and deported to Panama.
I got in touch with Sarah Bennett and she connected me to Trinity and Assia, and Trinity was coming home after ten years of being isolated from society, so she was thinking about who am I, who knows me, who knows my story, so it was serendipitous in many ways because we were able to offer her a way to speak to her experience. And Assia had already been forced to be her fiercest advocate, because she was looking to get her clemency case properly reviewed by the governor and return home, so she was incredibly open. I’m so grateful for both of them for being willing to trust me because it’s a big ask when someone says, I want to come and tell your story, and have you sit in a chair and open up your wounds and tell these traumatic and horrific experiences. It requires a lot of patience and trust, but I’m really proud of the film, and I know they’re grateful for the story.
You wouldn’t think so while watching it, but it’s a hugely ambitious production since you’ve got to film Trinity in the U.S. and Assia in Panama. What was it like to undertake a bifurcated shoot like this?
I wanted it to be a real fly-on-the-wall, verite story, which was difficult as we knew we needed funding and folks to help us bring this story [to the screen]. It was very intimidating because there was always this question of when is the story going to end? That was the first question we often got asked by funders and I didn’t want to answer that question. I felt very strong feelings about the fact that this story requires patience. We need to let life unfold. We filmed with Trinity when she was on the inside, and we journeyed with her in the months and years following her release, so it’s one of those things that I think people only have an appreciation for once the entire film is over. I don’t know that I fully knew what the journey was going to look like in the beginning. It was two-plus years of documenting their journey, but I think I just felt like a real responsibility to get it right. I knew because they were willing to share and be open and allow me not only into their lives, but also their family’s lives, which was its own trust building process, so there was no way I could betray what that really meant.
The idea of distance between these families that have been broken up is really beautifully expressed in the film with how you give space to scenes structurally. What was it like to find a way to convey that?
One of the things that we did was we would film for a little bit, we’d start to edit, see what the story was and then go back into the field, do a little bit more filming and then spend some more time in the edit and I have to give a lot of credit to my editor Sandrine Isamberg, an incredible partner in this journey. She cared so deeply about the story and it wasn’t just like, “Okay, cut here, splice here.” She really appreciated this was a sensitive story in the same way that I did and we had to treat it as such. Unfortunately, sometimes in documentary, there is a tendency with editors who are a little bit removed from the story to treat it as “these are pieces on a board and we’re going to move this story here and piece this together, and I knew we couldn’t approach it in that way.
It was a very natural process that unfolded and we also involved a lot of people throughout in the edit — our incredible executive producers Geeta Gandbhir, Rudy Valdez, and Blair Foster, who have so much experience in telling stories like this — so we were able to pull from their feedback. For example, when Trinity and her mother have that sit-down and they’re talking about their past and it’s a little tense and uncomfortable, we knew that there was a pause that was needed and we also thought it was important to hear from her mom. There’s often a huge empathy gap in general with stories like this [where] I think people are looking to latch on like, “Oh, I like this person,” or “I don’t like this person,” and it’s never that simple. We’re all complicated people. So it was a real team effort [to think] how do we offer empathy in places that we often don’t see it?
Was there anything that happened that took this in a direction you didn’t expect or change your ideas about it?
One thing I anticipated was that the film would be about the structural and systemic barriers [to reentering society such as] of how does one get a job? How does one sustain themselves? And it is that when Trinity was struggling just to get insurance. She really wanted therapy and to find a way to deal with some of the emotional aspects of her past. Those barriers were high, but I think it ultimately became more about the familial and the relational and the personal aspects [of reentry]. I don’t know that I envisioned that early on, but I also knew I didn’t want to manufacture my own concept of what their experience was. I have my own personal experience, but the goal was how do we show how varied it is? It’s one of the reasons, in the earlier stages of the film, we were going to focus on three women and one of the women was an older woman in her sixties who had served the full 25 years that she was sentenced to. She never benefited from the law and I wanted to use her story to show this could have been a Trinity or Assia had they not benefited from the law and they’re coming home at an age when they should be retiring and are starting from nothing. But even within the two stories [of Assia and Trinity], I hope we were able to [show how] different these experiences really are.
In the first scene of the film, you actually show Assia and Trinity talking to one another. How did that connection come about?
It’s funny because they had both had overlapping sentences at Bedford Hills, so they served time together and they knew each other. One of the great reflections that Assia had when I spoke to her about Trinity and [she said], “I remember when she came in and I looked at her and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s a baby’ and people probably felt the same thing about me because we went in at similar ages.” So they had a very interesting connection. Assia, like Trinity, was always in the law library, studying. She always was on straight and narrow. Every single time there was a new program or opportunity, she was the first one in, so they had that in common, and [for us] we know that they have this relationship, but how do we kind of convey that to the audience? Assia has been really helpful with Survived and Punished and Women in Justice Project and she has taken on the role of welcoming home women when they are returning, so it was natural [to put that scene in the film as Trinity is getting adjusted]. They actually do sometimes group calls and have conversations and reflect. I didn’t feel comfortable kind of showing everyone [Assia does that for], but Assia was like, “Well, I want to talk to Trinity anyway. Why don’t we just have a conversation?” And of course, that was an interesting way to open up the film.
What’s it been like to get to this point with the film and start sharing it with people?
It has been incredible. You live with a film for so long and it’s naturally an isolating journey. People [ask], “What are you working on?” And you share bits and pieces of what it is, but no one can really fully conceptualize this thing because even you’re still figuring out what it’s going to look like.” We were so honored when South by Southwest accepted the film and it was an incredible moment because it feels like a release after so long of intellectualizing and questioning it. It’s such a rigorous and sometimes exhausting process to bring a film to life, especially in this very bleak landscape that the industry seems to be at right now, and I remember the premiere, I wanted to sit near the front, but my editor who has a lot of experience with this type of stuff [said], “No, no, let’s go towards the back” because then you could see the audience, watch your film and just see people wipe away tears. After the Q and A, folks were coming up to us and sharing their reflections and how it landed for them, which I felt was indicative of the fact that we had made them feel something, which I thought really underscores the power of this art form.
It was beautiful and you know, but I do want to add, it’s not easy and it’s really important [to say], especially like sometimes when we talk about the experience of making a film, we’re talking about it at the end point and it’s very easy to glamorize. Our premiere screening was wonderful, but it was a very, very, difficult journey to bring this film to life and it’s not easy even afterwards because you’re still trying to encourage people [to see it]. You have to wear every hat, you’re the impact producer and you’re doing all of these things. It’s never really easy, but it’s very rewarding.
“Exodus” will screen at Blackstar Film Fest on August 1st at 3 pm at the Perelman Theater at Kimmel and available to stream for 48 hours on Blackstar’s virtual platform beginning at 7:30 pm EST. It will next screen in Los Angeles at HollyShorts on August 10th at 5 pm at TCL Chinese 6.