INTERVIEW: ‘Unsettled’ explores journey of queer refugees coming to United States
Photo: Unsettled tells the story of queer refugees finding new lives and new residences in the United States. Photo courtesy of press kit / Provided with permission.
In recent years, under the administration of President Donald Trump, the United States’ policy when it comes to immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers has been drastically modified, especially when compared to past periods in American history. The proverbial doors have not been completely shut, but the space of entry is down to a minimum sliver. This has disrupted the progress being made on many community fronts, including the resettlement of queer refugees who were often fleeing their families and countries because of the discrimination and violence they faced as members of the LGBTQ community.
The story of some of these queer refugees and how they have fared in the United States is the subject of the new documentary Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America, directed and produced by Tom Shepard and premiering June 28 on WORLD Channel’s Doc World series, which is broadcast on local PBS stations (followed by a two-week run on WorldChannel.org).
“In 2014, I was doing some volunteer work for Jewish Family and Community Services, which is a refugee resettlement organization, and that organization has been resettling refugees for decades and decades,” Shepard said in a recent phone interview. “For the first time, the State Department and Health & Human Services issued a grant to resettle queer refugees, and this organization was the first to receive it. And I thought, wow, this is a pretty ripe moment.”
At that time, Shepard didn’t know too much about refugee and asylum policy in the United States. He admitted that articulating the difference between a refugee and an asylum seeker was difficult for him. (Amnesty International has a helpful glossary.) So he needed to get to work with his fellow producer, Jen Gilomen, and see where and how he could help; if a film was going to come from these stories, he wanted to go about it the right, respectful way.
“So we worked with Jewish Family and Community Services, and I met two of the refugee subjects from that organization,” he said. “It was very delicate, as you can imagine. Most queer refugees have experienced trauma, if not torture, and so there was huge reticence to shove cameras in their faces right as they were arriving. And so I think it really served the project well to have done some volunteer work with them for several months before that happened.”
This was a time in the United States’ recent history when LGBTQ civil rights were accelerating. The U.S. Supreme Court made an historic and foundational ruling concerning marriage equality, and many individuals and communities were celebrating this new and profound step in the fight for equality.
Still, Shepard knew that the world still struggled with homophobia, and members of the global LGBTQ community were still facing unbelievable obstacles — and sometimes even their lives were in danger.
“If you looked at other parts of the globe, and particularly in Africa and the Middle East, you were almost seeing an inverse relationship — 70 countries outlawing being gay or transgender, seven countries employing the death penalty,” he said. “So the level of persecution and state-sponsored homophobia seemed to be getting worse. … I’m a gay man, and looking at the community in San Francisco, I felt complacency setting in. It just felt like the right time to humanize these stories.”
When Shepard and his team started interviewing a variety of queer refugees, they began to learn about the motivations and unique circumstances that drove these individuals to leave (and sometimes flee) their home countries. Occasionally it was family issues — they were rejected for coming out. Other times, it was religious persecution or governmental encroachment in their lives. Often it was a combination of all these factors.
As one example, the filmmaker pointed to Junior, a subject in the film who is a gender non-conforming gay man from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the documentary, he struggles to find housing while also exploring his gender identity.
“In the case of Junior from the Congo, his own mother was a fundamentalist preacher and preached the sort of sin of homosexuality,” Shepard said. “Of course, you’ve heard of things like honor killings and incidences where men will rape lesbians or women who are allegedly not heterosexual to put them on the ‘straight path,’ and there seems in some communities to still be support and reinforcement for that. … And this country has a very good record of resettling refugees going back to World War II, but it’s traditionally been based on families, like a family will flee a war-torn zone of Syria or Iraq. And if they come to the Bay Area, where I live, they’re immediately connected to members of their home country, their diaspora, so maybe it’s a community center or a mosque or a grocery store. And it’s by no means easy, but they have those initial footholds. If you’re a gay Iraqi, and you arrive in the Bay Area, quite possibly the last people you want to see are other Iraqis because you’re not fleeing with family. You’re often fleeing from family, and that’s kind of the heart-breaking piece of this story.”
One of the most inspiring voices in Unsettled is that of Subhi Nahas, who has gone through the refugee process in the United States and also become a leader and advocate, helping others enduring a similar journey.
“His story was so unusual,” the director said. “He wasn’t in the country three months, and he was invited by the then-ambassador Samantha Power to testify before the [United Nations] Security Council and almost overnight became a poster boy for refugee rights and queer refugee rights. Of course, all the press was interested in talking to him, but also a lot people back in Syria and the Middle East and countries of transit were reaching out to him, like how can you help me? It was such a beautiful and heartbreaking irony that the strategy that Subhi had used his entire life to survive was to push it down, was to remain invisible and be silent, and suddenly now he was speaking on a world stage. And that was extraordinary to see that.”
Shepard accompanied Nahas to New York City when he testified at the United Nations. Afterward they made a trip to the historic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in order for Nahas to learn about the history of the LGBTQ movement in the United States. The Stonewall, of course, is where 1969 riots essentially launched the modern gay rights movement in the U.S.
“You could just feel him almost accepting the baton of this ongoing civil rights effort, and we went out on the Staten Island ferry,” Shepard remembers. “And we were looking at the Statue of Liberty and just thinking he’s the next generation, and he’s speaking out for the rights of people in Africa and the Middle East. That gave us some inspiration in a film that has a lot of dark corners.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America, directed by Tom Shepard, will premiere Sunday, June 28 at 8 p.m. on WORLD Channel via local PBS stations. After its premiere, it will have a two-week run on WorldChannel.org. Click here for more information.
