A hometown girl is premiering her movie in Chatham this weekend.
The premiere of When Morning Comes is free and is presented by FLiCK (Filming Local in Chatham-Kent).
Award-winning filmmaker Kelly Fyffe-Marshall, whose family immigrated from England to Chatham when she was 11 years old, decided to make a movie to highlight the trial and tribulations of Jamaican migrants.
The emotional drama follows Jamal, a 9-year-old Jamaican boy, as he says goodbye to his friends and family and prepares to leave his home behind because his newly widowed mother is sending him to live with his grandmother in Canada.
Jamal's mother decides to send him away out of concern for his safety and his future after he gets in trouble at school. The move unsettles Jamal and exacerbates the friction in the relationship with his mom.
The movie is being described as a love letter to the strength and sacrifice of immigrant mothers.
Fyffe-Marshall told CK News Today the movie hits close to home and she wanted to write about her own experience of moving from a far away country.
"I wanted to pull from a lot of the experiences that I had when I was immigrating to Canada from England. I wanted to pull from a lot of those memories and feelings that I was going through and that's the basis of the inspiration behind the movie," said Fyffe-Marshall.
Fyffe-Marshall said it's special to have her movie premiere in Chatham because her grandfather still lives in Chatham and she has many wonderful memories of growing up in Chatham.
"My grandfather lives there, David Fyffe, and he has a whole community of Caribbeans and Jamaicans. We spent a lot of summers there helping migrants and with our family picnic and barbecue and the corn tasseling, the quintessential Chatham thing to do in the summer for kids," she added.
The movie will be showing for free at Chatham's Capitol Theatre Saturday night starting at 6 p.m.
Fyffe-Marshall is a TIFF, Sundance, and Canadian Academy of Film and Television award-winning director.
