This Place

“I want to love like the ocean. When the tide comes in, the ocean has to leave the shore. They understand they will always come back to each other.”

Short Synopsis/

The emerging love between two young women is complicated by their families’ histories, which bear the legacies of loss, migration and displacement.

THIS PLACE is the story of two young women falling in love for the first time. One is half-Iranian, half-Mohawk; the other is Tamil. Kawenniióhstha has just moved to Toronto, to pursue her dream of becoming a poet. The city is also where her estranged father lives. Raised by her single Kanien’kehá:ka mother in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk territory, she never knew her dad. And he does not know she exists. She yearns to meet him, but struggles to make contact. For Malai, after the passing of her mother, her father’s alcoholism reaches its peak, pushing her to leave home with her elder brother. Years later, as her father battles terminal cancer, she tries to reconcile with him, while navigating her brother’s refusal to do the same. Through two families complicated by love and loss, this film intimately explores the stories of those living in the liminal space between cultures, displaced both at home and abroad. At the centre of it all remains Kawenniióhstha and Malai, whose journeys we follow together and apart.

Credits/

Director: V. T. Nayani

Producer: Stephanie Sonny Hooker

Starring: Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs, Priya Guns 

“I feel like everything is falling apart. Again… I really don’t want to lose you. Especially now.” 

“I’ve already lost myself.” 

Genre/

Romance/ Drama

Duration/

87 mins

Language/

English

Release Date/

14th Aug 2023

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