Last Chance
A documentary examines Canada's "downward slide" in its treatment of LGBT refugee-status claimants.
DIRECTED BY PAUL EMILE D’ENTREMONT
Last Chance opens with the sound of a Jamaican woman named Trudi begging not to be killed. Trudi is one of five LGBT subjects in Paul Émile d’Entremont’s sobering look at the process of applying for refugee status in Canada as a result of sexual discrimination in one’s country of origin. That harrowing start sets the stakes for a powerful and clear-eyed account of what it means to seek asylum in a foreign country, even one that, like Canada, is seen as a beacon of human rights.
D’Entrement’s film strikes a nice balance between personal testimony and procedural detail. His subjects, hailing from nations as disparate as Colombia and Lebanon, are unfailingly humble and articulate, their stories of profound social estrangement and violence heartbreaking. Their complex view of Canada—filtered variously through their utopian hopes for a less punishingly normative society and deep skepticism about how the legal system might welcome them—is fascinating. That picture is complicated further by the presence of various human rights lawyers and activists in additional interviews.
While these talking heads are quick to point out Canada’s generally positive international reputation in such cases (on account of its historical precedent of admitting the first gay and transexual refugees in the 1990s), they are also deeply troubled by what they see as its downward slide in recent years. Trudi’s case is a good example of the draconian nature of the process. When she makes her case upon arrival in Toronto, she’s warned that without “documentation” of the identity she’s long been forced to publicly suppress for her safety, her application might easily be thrown out. How one might go about documenting one’s sexuality is a puzzle that’s left as ambiguous for us as it is for Trudi, who at least has the good fortune to have a partner who can vouch for her identity, unlike some of the film’s other subjects.
In observance of Human Rights Day on December 10, Last Chance screens for free on the NFB website from December 7 to 9.