A spirit of colonialism on screen

The Jamaican film industry has a new flagship: Possession, a Sky supernatural series from director Storm Saulter, built around one striking image. A woman opens a 300-year-old box, and a violent spirit bursts out - the spirit of colonialism and oppression roaring back to life. The series follows a biracial British lawyer who travels to Jamaica to investigate a multimillion-pound inheritance dispute, only to uncover a dark, vengeful spirit tied to the plantation's colonial past.

For Saulter, that opening scene works as a metaphor: histories long kept suppressed are resurfacing, as Caribbean creatives confront enslavement, inherited trauma and colonial violence. He has described it as lifting the lid on a 300-year-old secret, with the spirit of colonial enslavement and oppression returning in force.

He says that 'spirit' is embodied in a character who has lived through centuries of brutality, a witness to history who forces the protagonists to reckon with the inherited past. Saulter has said that representing the trauma and enduring legacy of enslavement and colonisation powerfully was critical to him. He also wanted the series to educate and carry real societal and political impact while staying thrilling and entertaining - bringing audiences on a journey rather than staging talking heads.

Cultural reparation through film

Dr Lisa Tomlinson, a lecturer in film studies at the University of the West Indies, sees the series as part of a shift in what Jamaican cinema is willing to tackle. Jamaican films, she says, are now connected and reflective of Jamaican stories - stories that were previously taboo or avoided. Many engage with the legacies of enslavement through cultural memory, and for her that work is itself a form of reparation: in her view, reparation is not only political, it is also cultural.

Her argument, in brief:

• •Creative expression that carries African-derived spiritualities and historical knowledge gives Jamaicans the authority to tell their own stories.
• •The arts play a critical role in public awareness and education around reparation, in ways academics or politicians struggle to achieve.
• •Diaspora film-makers are moving away from the tourist-gaze depictions and are capturing Jamaican everyday life, unlike foreign productions that use Jamaica as an exotic backdrop.

Growing confidence in local production

Jacqueline Jackson, Jamaica's film commissioner, points to Possession and Delroy Lindo's Jabari's People - shot entirely in Jamaica - as evidence of growing confidence and ambition among Jamaican creatives. She says both productions worked closely with Jamaican talent to ensure authenticity and show what international financing plus Jamaican creativity can achieve, demonstrating the growing interest in Jamaican stories and their potential for global audiences.

On her account, Jamaica's standing as a filming location is already secure; what she wants to see more of now is local production, alongside international collaboration to tell Jamaican stories.

Roots and resistance

Saulter's own interest in the subject grew from a countryside upbringing. As he put it, he grew up with the Obia man, the church and nine nights - he has lived through all of those things.

Dr L'Antoinette Stines, a Yoruba priestess and cultural expert who advised on Possession, places the series' Afro-spiritualist engagement in a longer lineage of resistance through the arts.

Stines, who has choreographed similar work for decades, stresses the importance of honouring the academics, poets and creatives who paved the way for the current boom in authentic Jamaican storytelling. She praises Saulter's insistence on authenticity and a series that feels both contemporary and deeply rooted, exploring inherited trauma, ancestral memory and colonialism's unfinished business.

That context matters: Caribbean countries increasingly argue that centuries of enslavement left the region at a lasting disadvantage, fuelling renewed calls for reparations. Saulter sees the series as part of a broader political awakening, in which a false narrative has been exposed and people are seeking what is true.