Marcos Doesn't Live Here Anymore examines the national issue of immigration with the help of two unforgettable protagonists, demonstrating the human cost of deportation. Elizabeth Perez, a decorated United States Marine veteran and national immigration activist living in Cleveland, tirelessly works to reunite her family after her husband Marcos, an undocumented soccer referee from Mexico, is deported. Meanwhile, Marcos is in Mexico coping with his loneliness, grappling with the urge to cross the border illegally to see his family and the temptation to give up and move on without his wife and children. With the unfiltered intimacy that is a signature of his work, Sutherland weaves a parallel-action love story that takes us inside a world often lived in the shadows, on both sides of the border. In the end, Elizabeth's efforts to return her husband hit a legal brick wall, and she is forced to plan for the unthinkable alternative: leaving the United States to live in exile in Mexico and keep her family together. After seven years, Elizabeth, Marcos, and their children are finally reunited in Mexico, but without any sense of how to live together as a family. Ultimately, the love story ends with Marcos and Elizabeth wondering if their relationship will ever recover from the trauma of Marcos's deportation.

It took over 20 years and countless reviews for a writer to accurately capture the essence of David Sutherland's work, but a piece from the Baltimore Sun finally hit the nail on the head. “No one makes documentaries the way David Sutherland does. And perhaps no one ever will; the toll is too great. The documentarian's methods more closely resemble an ethnographer's than a television director's. He steeps himself in the minute details, emotions and struggles of his subjects' lives, trying to see the world through their eyes. Never mind closing the distance between viewer and object viewed, this filmmaker all but obliterates that distinction through his own intense identification and empathy with the people he films.”

6 Hours, broadcast nationally over 3 nights on Frontline /PBS in 2006

For everyone who remembers what it was like to be young -- when the whole world seemed to stretch out before you while you were stuck in your own backyard -- this special FRONTLINE series tells the story of Chris and Cody: two boys growing up in a hard land, determined to beat the odds against them, and struggling with who they are -- and who they can become.

6.5 Hours, broadcast nationally over 3 nights on Frontline/PBS in Sept. 1998

David Sutherland takes us deep inside the world of Juanita and Darrel Buschkoetter, a young Nebraska farm couple, to tell a compelling love story. Gleaned from more than 200 hours of film shot on location over three years, "The Farmer's Wife" follows Juanita and Darrel as they face seemingly insurmountable economic hardship, only to confront an even greater challenge -- saving their marriage.

Broadcast nationally on POV/PBS in 1989

This bold and unconventional film portrait reveals America's foremost Social Realist painter doing what he does best: skewering corrupt politicians and police, raging over social injustices, and satirizing the petty foibles of human kind. Jack Levine got his professional start during the Federal Arts Projects of the WPA, and quickly became world famous for his brilliantly painted, brutally ironic vision of America and the world. He's the only American artist who never stopped painting as a Social Realist, even when it went out of vogue in the 1950s and 1960s.

"**** One of the ten best films of 1986! A feast of a movie." -Nat Segaloff, BOSTON HERALD

"David Sutherland has managed a coup -- having the subject be the host/narrator and still emerge with a magnificent portrait of a maverick satirist and social commentator." -Al Morch, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

"The symbiosis between director and subject is so pure that nothing distorts the relationship between audience and artist." -Michael Blowen, BOSTON GLOBE