The film Finding Home (Buscando mi Hogar) is a 30-minute personal hybrid documentary about how living around the world shaped the identity of my father and me. Since my mother works for an NGO, this brought a nomadic lifestyle to our family that involved us living cross-national/cultural lives. To unpack the question “Where are you from?” the film investigates two contrasting worlds of identity through conversations between my father and me.
During our travels, my father was motivated to maintain his national identity as a Bolivian through music, language, and cuisine. In contrast, I constantly searched for a sense of belonging and a “home.”
Feeling constant pressure to belong to a specific nation or culture while growing up created an identity crisis that has remained with me until now. I seek to understand what it means to have a national identity in an attempt to move it away from contextualizing a “home” to a geographical location.
My film incorporates observational footage depicting the present day, while collage animation, archival, and home footage will convey the memories from our travels.