This verite-style film invites viewers into the intimate conversations between Maria and her grandchild, Marucha: two Indigenous refugees living in displacement. To Maria, the Venezuelan delta is her home. To Marucha, these refugee camps are all she knows. Through the rhythms of their daily lives, we witness the complexity of raising a new generation in displacement and explore how land, memory and identity are deeply intertwined.
This project aims to help visualize the invisible losses of Indigenous displacement, through the narratives of two generations’ voices weaving together. Their conversations demonstrate how memories are processed and passed down across generations while far away from the land that holds the fingerprint of their unique culture and identity.
Join us in supporting Indigenous Warao refugees, who are featured in this film, as they harness the power of storytelling in order to pass down memories of home, culture, and language, to a new generation growing up in displacement.
Indigenous displacement has global cultural ramifications. Despite comprising less than 5% of the earth’s population, Indigenous communities account for the majority of the world’s cultural diversity. It’s time to center the Indigenous experience and promote their visibility.
In the face of this unprecedented mass migration, there is an urgent need to resource and support displaced Indigenous communities’ efforts to hold onto their unique cultural identities, languages, and traditions.
By supporting their efforts, we can guard against vast portions of the globe’s cultural diversity disappearing.
Drunken Film Festival
October 6-11 Exact time and location TBD
Hawai'i Premiere at Hawai'i International Film Festival
October 13, 11:30am Consolidated Theatres Kahala
Louisiana Premiere at at The New Orleans Film Festival
October 17-22 Exact time and location TBD
Savannah Premiere at SCAD Savannah Film Festival
October 26-November 2 Exact time and location TBD
New York Premiere at DOC NYC Film Festival
November 18 Exact time TBD at Village East Cinema
Past Screenings and Events:
Tennessee Premiere at Nashville Film Festival
September 20, 1:30pm Regal Green Hills Theatre
Jackson Wild Media Awards: Social Impact Award Nominee
September 5, 5:00pm AFI Silver Spring
Rhode Island Premiere at Flicker's Rhode Island International Film Festival
August 7, 3:00pm Providence Showcase Cinema
Palm Springs Shortsfest
June 22, 2:15pm
DC Premiere at DC/DOX Film Festival
June 16, 2024, 5:15pm Landmark E-Street Cinema
European Premiere at The Norwegian Short Film Festival
June 13, 2024, 10:00am Catilina Theatre
San Francisco Doc Fest
June 6, 2024, 6:15pm The Roxie Theatre
International Premiere at Santiago Wild
May 23, 2024, 4:30pm Ñuñoa Cultural Corporation
**On tour in Chile with the Santiago Wild Tour for the coming months
California Premiere at The San Francisco International Film Festival
April 28, 2024, 1:30pm Marina Theatre
May 3, 2024, 11:00am Paul Revere Elementary School
Georgia Premiere at The Atlanta Film Festival
April 27, 2024, 12:30pm The Tara Theatre
May 5, 2024, 3:00pm The Tara Theatre
Southeast Premiere at RiverRun Film Festival
April 19, 2024, 4:00pm UNCSA Gold Theatre
Southwest Premiere at Aspen Shortsfest
April 3, 2024, 9:00am Basalt Middle School
April 4, 2024, 7:15am Glenwood Springs Middle School
April 4, 2024, 5:00pm Wheeler Opera House
World Premiere at the Big Sky Documentary Festival, Missoula Montana
February 20, 2024, 11:00am Big Sky High School
February 21, 2024, 9:00am University of Montana
February 21, 2024, 2:00pm ZACC
February 21, 2024, 4:00pm University of Montana
February 23, 2024, 3:00pm The Wilma, Soft Landing Missoula Sponsored
We believe that how a story is made is just as important as the story itself. This includes working to align our process with key values:
Bruna is an activist, public speaker and writer from Brazil who focuses on forced displacement and climate change. Bruna designed and co-founded Circles of Hospitality, an organization that develops social, cultural and educational initiatives for refugees, asylum seekers and vulnerable immigrants in Florianópolis, Brazil.
José Albarrán is a Venezuelan human rights activist based in Brazil. He works on the front lines of care for immigrants and refugees by offering humanitarian interpretation and intercultural mediation with Venezuelan Indigenous people of the Warao ethnic group.
We would love to come to your school, production company, or community to talk about collaborative reporting and community co-creations within the filmmaking and storytelling industry. Our goal is to challenge current industry power dynamics and create new models for community-led storytelling. Please fill out the form below if you are interested in having us speak to your group or consult on a project.
Existimos En La Memoria is part of a larger, ongoing collaboration with the communities from the Warao tribe living in displacement in Brazil to use the power of storytelling to platform voices of Indigenous displacement.
The Home Collective was invited into this story through Bruna Kadletz in April 2021. To create this short film, our team was a blend of unique skills and lived experience from Brazil, Venezuela, and the U.S.
