Award-winning Jamaican filmmaker Sosiessia Nixon has released a tense new feature that examines the persistence of obeah, the West African–rooted system of magic and spiritual healing still practised in Jamaica despite being criminalised centuries ago.
Stew Peas follows Detective Tessa, a woman consumed by an unresolved murder case. When Tessa’s marriage begins to unravel, suspicion falls on the couple’s new housemaid, Marcia. The plot takes a darker turn with the disclosure that Marcia has been slipping a hidden ingredient into Tessa’s husband Neil’s food: her menstrual blood, mixed into the country’s traditional kidney-bean and meat stew.
Nixon says the film interrogates a specific Jamaican belief—that a woman can “bind” a man to her by adding menstrual blood to stew peas, transforming an everyday dish into a potent love charm. “This film focuses on the persisting Jamaican obeah belief, that a woman could ‘bind’ a man in a relationship by serving him a meal of the traditional kidney beans and meat stew, which becomes a potent love potion when her menstrual blood is added,” she explains. Nixon hopes the story sparks conversation about whether belief itself can create reality.
She also intends the film to open space for debate about the tension between Christianity and African-derived spiritualities in Jamaica. Obeah was suppressed by colonial authorities in the 18th century and remains illegal under laws that critics say are colonial relics.
A native of St Thomas, a coastal parish sometimes dubbed the “obeah parish,” Nixon says her inspiration came from real-life exposure to these practices. “Growing up in St Thomas, I was very much exposed to a lot of obeah,” she says.
Producer and actor Ava Eagle Brown, the founder of Jamaica’s Black River Film Festival and a cast member in Stew Peas, believes the film will resonate across the Caribbean and among the diaspora. “There is so much of us in this film, the things that make us Jamaican – especially if you’re in the diaspora … it brings you back home,” she says. She adds with a wry warning that the film may make some men more suspicious of their partners: “It’s probably going to now have some men looking at their woman with suspicion and asking: ‘What did you put in my stew peas?’” On a lighter note she quipped that she warned her son not to accept stew peas from an unknown woman.
Sonjah Stanley Niaah, a Jamaican cultural studies scholar and director at UWI’s Centre for Reparation Research, situates the stew-peas belief in a wider African cosmology that attributes efficacy to natural elements, including menstrual blood. The red kidney beans, she says, are thought to mask the presence of blood so the intended target cannot detect it.
Stanley Niaah welcomes the film as an opportunity to explore African spiritual traditions that have long been misunderstood and stigmatised. She notes that colonial authorities vilified and outlawed these practices because they associated them with resistance among enslaved people. “People in this part of the world are people of African descent and there’s a pantheon of African spirituality that we have in our blood, that we have inherited … But [today], African spirituality has no attention, no substance, it’s not being taught in schools, we are so afraid of ourselves, we are neglecting it,” she says.
She also points to the enduring legal and cultural architecture that discouraged gatherings and the practice of African-derived religions: measures designed to prevent worship and to limit organisation among enslaved people that continue to influence attitudes and laws, including Jamaica’s Obeah Act.
Beyond its cultural themes, the film arrives at a difficult moment for Jamaica’s creative sector. Hurricane Melissa devastated parts of Black River, forcing Brown to postpone that year’s film festival and destroying infrastructure, equipment and livelihoods. Brown calls Stew Peas “a ray of hope” for an industry battling to recover, arguing that such projects demonstrate Jamaican resilience and keep the country visible to the international market.
“This year I had to postpone the Black River film festival, which was a real blow because it was part of how Jamaican creatives were starting to connect with the globe, including contacts from major networks,” Brown says. “The hurricane destroyed so much! It destroyed infrastructure, equipment and for some people it destroyed hope. And that is why we need projects like this that demonstrate the resilience of Jamaicans, and send a message to the world that we are still making music and movies and adding that quintessential Jamaican green, gold and black hue to entertainment.”
Jamaica’s film commissioner, Jackie Jacqueline Jackson, praised Stew Peas as evidence of the creative sector’s ingenuity and determination. She said films like this help signal that Jamaica remains open for business and can encourage international productions to return, bringing jobs and investment to the local industry.
Stew Peas thus positions itself as both a thriller and a cultural conversation starter—inviting audiences to consider how belief, history and law intersect in contemporary Jamaica while showcasing the persistence of African-derived traditions in the island’s social and artistic life.
