Some Sweet Day
Some Sweet Day is an intimate exploration of the question: “When flesh and heart fail, what remains?” Shot between Jamaica and Florida, the film weaves together these landscapes to reflect the layered complexities of grief. Following the filmmaker and his mother, Camille, as they navigate life after the loss of a husband and father, the story wrestles with difficult emotions, unspoken regrets, and the enduring weight of loss across time and place. Through its dual settings, the film examines how memory, culture, and location shape the way we process and carry grief.
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Rasheed PetersDirector
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Rasheed PetersProducer
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Xi YeEditor
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Maya WannerStory Editor
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Rasheed PetersCinematagrophy
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Xi YeSoundMix + Design
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Eleanor HarmonColor + Graphics
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Project Type:Documentary, Experimental, Short
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Runtime:19 minutes 36 seconds
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Completion Date:October 2, 2023
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Country of Origin:United States
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Country of Filming:United States, Jamaica, United States
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Language:English
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Shooting Format:Digital
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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Chicago Filmmakers SEEN Vol 17
United States
Official Selection -
Iowa City Internaional Documentary Festival
United States
Official Selection -
Windrush Caribbean Film Festival
United Kingdom
Official Selection -
Conch Shell International Film Festival
United States
Official Selection -
Full Spectrum Features: Our RIght to Gaze
United States
Official Selection -
Black Harvest Film Festival
United States
Official Selection
Rasheed Peters is a Jamaican-born interdisciplinary artist and media professional based in Chicago. His work explores intergenerational relationships, the Caribbean immigrant experience, and preserving Black cultural practices. Rasheed combines new/old media, archival materials, and dialogical practices to create work that provokes conversation. He aims to bring his creative visions to life while contributing to arts administration and creative production.
Some Sweet Day is deeply personal, rooted in the eight-year journey my family and I navigated as we cared for my father following his unexpected illness in 2014. His passing in 2022 was not the beginning of our grief. It had been creeping into our lives long before, manifesting in the quiet ruptures of anticipatory loss. Initially, I set out to explore the weight of living in that liminal space, but after his death, the film’s focus shifted.
The project evolved from Dead Yard, a four-channel video installation inspired by Jamaican mourning traditions, featuring my mother, my father’s brother, and his mother. While that work examined grief as a collective experience, Some Sweet Day distills it into a cinematic meditation on my mother’s journey. She was a grieving wife and, by extension, the mother of a grieving son. I sought to understand how she, like me, faced yet another new normal, processing loss through a storm of emotions, regrets, and unanswered questions.
The film’s production was deliberately intimate. I was the sole crew member, ensuring a space of deep personal reflection. At its core is a candid conversation between my mother and me, set in the guest room of her Florida apartment. This dialogue, interwoven with archival footage and my own interaction with family photos, invites viewers to engage with themes of loss, memory, and the permanence of absence.
Beyond the screen, Some Sweet Day challenges the societal discomfort around death and grief. We rarely confront life’s finality or discuss how to navigate mourning. In the wake of a global pandemic that left so many unprepared for loss, these conversations are more urgent than ever. If this film encourages even one person to engage more consciously with their grief, to seek support, to talk, or to remember, then it has fulfilled its purpose.