In a packed theater at the London Hotel in West Hollywood, Elegance Bratton stands before the screen and shares a painful truth. “I was 16 years old when my mother kicked me out because I am gay.”

He states a reality that many in the LGBTQ+ community experience when parents won’t accept who their children are and shun them rather than broaden their view to accept everything their offspring are. 

For Bratton, that expulsion from home resulted in ten horrific years of living on the street, before he made the radical decision to join the Marines and attempt to win back the love of his mother. The Inspection, which he wrote and directed, is the film inspired by that journey.

He now describes The Inspection this way. “It is about a homeless Black gay man who joins the Marine Corps to win his mother’s love. He’s willing to endure any trial for her validation, but ultimately, he learns how to respect himself through surviving bootcamp, and that’s my story.”

Indeed, it was after bootcamp as a Marine, that he was assigned a job that allowed him to acquire the skills he used to helm the film, that stars Jeremy Pope as Ellis French and Gabrielle Union as his prison guard mother, who cannot incorporate a gay son into her vision of what she wants in a child.

Against all odds, in the Marine Corps, he finds the family he never had, and there learns self-acceptance. But there was another lesson that he took away from boot camp that he wanted to share with a divided America. “I wanted to make a movie that could show people the importance of honoring the person to the left and to your right. Even if you don’t necessarily agree with them, even if you don’t see yourself like them, you got to honor that. That’s why I made the movie.”

As important, he felt, was the scarcity of LGBTQ+ stories reflected on the screen. “This film is also for those out there who are part of that community and feel alone,” he acknowledges after the film.

Earlier this year, in a press conference at TIFF, Jeremy Pope explained that that sense of inclusiveness was one of the appeals the project held for him.

“To have a story that centers on a Black, queer individual is so important and felt so necessary, and was so healing for me. I’m just grateful that I could be the vessel to tell your story,” he told the TIFF audience. “We (in the LGBTQ+ community) spend so much of our life hiding and having to navigate, to code switch, in institutions and situations, just to be safe.

“Being able to talk to Elegance, I feel very grateful that I was being directed by someone who had gone through this, a Black queer man that, outside of what our script was saying, we could talk about what was happening in life, and there were certain days where while I was carrying a lot of his, he was carrying a lot of mine, and that’s why this film was so healing and important for me just on my human journey, on my path of life, because I walked out of this film feeling stronger and feeling more confident in my Black and in my queer.”

Basketball star Dwayne Wade, who is married to Gabrielle Union, and who introduced Bratton at the West Hollywood event, echoed the need for a film such as The Inspection to encourage parents to love their children and support those who come out as LGBTQ+. Union and Wade share a transgender child, Zaya, which made the idea of portraying a homophobic mother unappealing to the Bring It On and Bad Boys II star.

When Union was offered the role she asked Elegance, “What have I ever given off that makes anyone think that I could even become close to embodying a character like this?” Bratton replied, “It can only be you.” She admits, “That level of confidence they had in me, allowed me to have a confidence I’ve never had in myself as an actor.”

At the New York Film Festival screening of The Inspection, Union told the audience, “I went from judging the characters that I played, into trying to find our common ground and their humanity. It changed everything.”

“I have a trans child,” she continued. “We do this work every day, of keeping our children alive and loved and seen, and to give not just her, but all of the children opportunities and love. My husband and I are confronted with parents who say, ‘I don’t know how to love my children.’ That is such a foreign concept to me. I never knew what to say to people like that. Now, through the excavation, the deep dive into who this character was before she got to this point, trying to find that humanity, has actually given me the tools to reach more parents who don’t know how to love their kids fully, completely, without condition, and so the whole experience has just been a blessing.”

That does not mean it was easy. Union continues, “Having to embody someone with such darkness was a challenge. I had to figure out how to find Inez’s humanity. Because I figured if I could figure out her humanity and my way around this character, perhaps just calling folks trash might not be the best way to help other parents not see their children as disposable.”

She adds, “As parents, we’re the first people to see our babies and love our babies. When those same people are the ones to reject those babies, it not only destroys families, it destroys communities. This whole film is about community building, and that is our goal: to go into the darkest parts of my soul and to try to be a part of the healing.”

She sums up the appeal of the role for her: “It was so everyone can see their children as deserving of peace, opportunity, protection, belief, love. None of our children are disposable. Trying to shove that down and to bring Inez forward was a challenge of a lifetime, but this is the most impactful and important work I’ve ever done. So, I’m just grateful to be here.”

As for the training to provide a realistic portrayal of a Marine bootcamp, Jeremy confesses it was not his favorite part of prepping for the role. “We had boot camp,” he chuckles. “I remember one morning we got up at four in the morning. God, it was brutal. I had to remind Elegance, ‘You know we’re acting, right?’”

Bratton, a New Jersey native, concludes with another reason he was compelled to bring his story to the screen. “This is for all the people that feel forgotten, to remember that you matter.”

Then he adds a heartbreaking dedication. “I want to dedicate this to my mother. My Mom. It is hard to do something that you haven’t been taught to do. No one ever loved my mother unconditionally and because of that, she wasn’t able to give that to me. For those other mothers out there who have problems that my mother has, they now (in this film), have an example of what it is to have someone love them unconditionally.”