Jamaican Film Possession Brings Legacy of Enslavement to the Screen
The Sky supernatural series Possession, filmed entirely in Jamaica, features a Jamaican film take on a biracial British lawyer who uncovers a vengeful spirit tied to a plantation's colonial past while investigating a multimillion-pound inheritance dispute. Director Storm Saulter says representing the trauma and legacy of enslavement was critical to the production.
Jamaican Film Possession Brings Legacy of Enslavement to the Screen
The Sky series Possession features a scene in which a woman unseals a 300-year-old box - and with it, a violent spirit. The show follows a biracial British lawyer who travels to Jamaica to investigate a multimillion-pound inheritance dispute and finds a dark, vengeful presence rooted in a plantation's colonial history.
For director Storm Saulter, making sure the trauma and enduring legacy of enslavement and colonisation were powerfully represented was critical to the project. Caribbean nations argue that enslavement left the region disadvantaged, and that argument has fuelled renewed calls for reparations.
A 300-year-old secret opened on screen
The box scene is the story's ignition point. Saulter described it as the moment the spirit of colonialism and oppression comes roaring back to life, no longer buried in the past.
"Literally, we're going to open up the lid of a 300-year-old horrible secret."
That spirit is embodied in a character who has lived through centuries of brutality, whom Saulter calls "a witness to history". The figure forces the show's protagonists to reckon with an inherited past they cannot ignore.
Taboo stories become Jamaican stories
Dr Lisa Tomlinson, a film studies lecturer at the University of the West Indies, sees Possession as part of a wider shift in what Jamaican film is willing to confront.
"They're now very much connected and reflective of Jamaican stories – stories that were previously taboo or avoided."
Her argument runs along several lines:
- Many Jamaican films now engage the legacies of enslavement through cultural memory, an approach she calls cultural reparation - a way of reclaiming narratives suppressed under colonialism.
- Reparation, in her framing, is not only political but cultural: "Reparation is not just a political act. It's also culture."
- The arts reach the public on reparation in ways academics and politicians struggle to match. "The arts play a critical role in how we are educated in public awareness around reparation."
- Diaspora film-makers, she says, are moving away from the tourist-gaze depictions that have dominated foreign productions using Jamaica as a backdrop, and are instead capturing Jamaican everyday life.
A political awakening and a rooted story
Saulter places the series inside a broader political awakening, one in which narratives long accepted as settled are being interrogated anew.
"The mask has slipped … We've been told it's one thing, and that thing is proven to be false."
His own storytelling has deep roots. He grew up in the Jamaican countryside, and he points to the Obia man, the church and nine nights as the material that shaped his imagination. "I've lived through all of those things," he said.
Education matters to him, but not at the expense of the audience's experience. He wants work with real societal and political impact that still thrills - a journey for viewers rather than, as he put it, talking heads.
Cultural advisor and a growing industry
Dr L'Antoinette Stines, a Yoruba priestess and cultural expert who advised on Possession, framed the series within a longer tradition. Black people, she said, have long used the arts as a form of resistance, and that fight is drawing greater attention today.
She has spent decades choreographing comparable work, and she says it matters to honour the academics, poets and creatives whose groundwork made today's wave of authentic Jamaican storytelling possible. Stines also praises Saulter's insistence on authenticity, resulting in a series that feels both contemporary and deeply rooted in inherited trauma, ancestral memory and colonialism's unfinished business.
Jamaica's film commissioner, Jackie Jackson, reads the moment industrially as well as culturally. She said productions such as Possession and Delroy Lindo's Jabari's People - both shot entirely in Jamaica - reflect growing confidence among Jamaican creatives, and that both worked closely with local talent to ensure authenticity and demonstrate the potential of Jamaican stories for global audiences.
"They show the growing interest in Jamaican stories and their potential for global audiences."
Jamaica, Jackson said, is well established as a destination for international productions. What she wants next is more local production, and more international collaboration, telling Jamaican stories from the inside.
