Boston Palestine Film Festival

Synopsis

In her award-winning debut feature film Traces of Home, filmmaker Colette Ghunim embarks on journeys with her parents to find the ancestral houses they were forced to flee as children in Mexico and Palestine. Colette’s initial desire to heal her disconnect from her cultures and her parents reveals an internal quest to discover home within herself. Executive Produced by Melissa Barrera and John Leguizamo.

Summary

Colette and her brother Ramsey had a typical American childhood. Raised in suburban Schaumburg, Illinois, there were birthday parties, school events, and family outings. Her father, Hosni, and mother, Iza were determined to give their children a happy life. But as a child, Colette always felt disconnected from her culture and her parents. Immigrants forced to flee Palestine and Mexico as children, her parents’ only desire was to make a life that was simple, safe, and American, but they couldn’t escape the unspoken divide that separated them as a family. Now, decades later, filmmaker Colette Ghunim takes us on an extraordinary journey of self-discovery: a quest to bridge that gap, find her parents’ childhood homes, and confront the pain of the past to heal their family.

Flipping through photo albums, Ghunim asks her parents why they came to the United States from Palestine and Mexico, and learns it wasn’t for a better life. “We were running away from something,” her mother replies. This surprising revelation kicks off Ghunim’s quest. Through grainy VHS footage and candid, revealing interviews with her brother and reticent parents, she paints an intimate portrait of a home steeped in troubling memories, where it felt, as her brother observes, that “something was always missing.”

When her parents agree to return to the countries they’d left so long ago, Ghunim begins an exhaustive search for homes that couldn’t possibly still exist, or could they? As they reflect on their upbringing and reconnect to their homelands and cultures, Ghunim’s parents begin to uncover the truth of the past, facing the fallout of political and personal violence (the Nakba in Palestine and an abusive, alcoholic father in Mexico). Once they close the distance to home and are standing at its door, they’ll learn what’s possible to remember and reclaim, and what it means to move forward as a family.

Traces of Home takes us inside the heart of reconciliation, with two international trips that capture the beauty and complications of confronting past and present Palestine and Mexico (made all the more
poignant by the erasure of Palestine happening even now). Interweaving unique animation styles for each country’s story, Ghunim creates films within the film: an evocative meditation on the nature of memory and loss. For the children of immigrants and anyone seeking to understand the legacy of childhood, cross-culture, and generational trauma, Traces of Home is essential viewing.

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