Diary Of A Badman, the low-budget drama that won Best Feature Film at last year’s Jamaica Film Festival, will be officially launched on March 30 at Carib Cinema.

It will also premiere at theatres in the Cayman Islands on that date.

This is the first time a film from the Jamaica Promotions Corporation-produced Jamaica Film Festival will be shown locally.

The Sunday Observer caught up with producer and lead actress Jacinth Sutphin, who plays detective Simone Williams.

“I’m so grateful to be the leading actress and producer in an independent film lined up with huge Hollywood blockbuster films for theatrical release and with no Hollywood faces, and no investors,” she said.

The 130-minute Diary Of A Badman was shot in sections of New York and New Jersey. The plot surrounds Williams, a Jamaican immigrant to the United States, who is working undercover on a high-profile case.

Her target is notorious drug dealer Winston ‘Bucky’ Bailey.

Diary Of A Badman has an 11-member cast, with Douglas A Robbs as Bucky and Michael Thor Love as Sergeant Putkowski, as well as other leading players. It was directed by London-born Diemiruaya Deniran.

In a previous interview with the Observer, the director described the film as a “Cleopatra Jones meets Donnie Brasco”.

“What makes the film so unique is that it gives the outlook on the entire undercover cop movie in a revitalising way by flipping the script from the cliché male cop role by having a female play the role. Women of African descent usually don’t acquire these opportunities; with Diary Of A Badman it changes that status quo,” he said.

Sutphin, 28, spent her early years with her grandmother in St Mary, but at age 13 migrated to Brooklyn, New York to live with her mother. While a student at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, she appeared in a number of theatre productions.

Her latest film is The Closest 1 To You, slated to be released on April 16.