Three high school students are forced to juggle with issues looming larger than grades or young love, as they face possible deportation and the realities of their broken family histories.
Matthew Newton portrays the lives of three undocumented teens in the Bronx: a Dominican girl with no family to turn to, an African boy who feels responsible for carrying the weight of his family, and a Peruvian girl with dim chances of attending college despite being the valedictorian of her high school. The film explores the various yet singular story of American immigration, while shaming a system that fails to recognize that there is nothing left for these young immigrants to return to. The three protagonists—with their differing levels and types of conflict—are brought together under the scrutiny of the law, and a judge who will single-handedly determine the course of their lives.
The three protagonists are stuck floating in between the waters of their home country, a place they do not know; and America, the home they have grown up in that rejects them as their own children. “I didn’t even know I was illegal until a few years ago,” they confess.
These teens are burdened with the uncertainties of their future—and more imminently, by the realities associated with being part of an undocumented family. This means financial stresses, lack of help to turn to, and the constant fear of being questioned by a police or an authority. In one scene, Moussa (J Mallory McCree) is caught in a minor entanglement due to no fault of his own, and is asked for his ID by the police. Quite serendipitously, Moussa finds himself saved from what could have led to his own deportation. However lucky Moussa had been, this scene represents the arbitrariness and vulnerability of his fate as an illegal immigrant.
Jackie (Julianne Nicholson), a teacher at the three students’ high school, actively tries to help them receive their papers with the help of a peculiar, yet well-intentioned lawyer (Denis O’Hara). The lawyer demands that they will need evidence to make their cases dire, such as proof of a relative or family member who has been mutilated or arrested. His motto is essentially, the more violent the better. Their best bet is to win the judge over by proving that they must stay for political asylum.
In addition to this political strife are other wounds festering: the theme of the loss of parents is one that runs across the board. All three have experienced the disappearance of one or more parents, disrupting their sense of foundation, home, and authority. “From Nowhere” does not have the same happy ending as Moussa had enjoyed during his first encounter with the police. In fact, it leaves the story unfinished, like the ongoing, fragmented story of American immigration.
The film hits theaters this Friday.
