Directed by Brenda Akele Jorde, the documentary film The Homes We Carry will make its North American premiere at Hot Docs 2023 on April 28 in the festival program “The Changing Face of Europe”.

Brenda Akele Jorde’s feature film debut paints a portrait of a family torn apart by the turmoil of world history between Germany, Mozambique and South Africa.

The Homes We Carry centers on Sarah, a young Afro-German who travels for the first time with her young daughter Luana to Mozambique and South Africa, where her own father and the child’s father are waiting for her. Sarah wants to give her daughter what she herself lacked as a child: a close relationship with her father and relatives in their home country. Meanwhile, Sarah’s father Eulidio remembers the almost forgotten history of the Mozambican contract workers in the former GDR. In his nostalgic daydreams, he returns to the origins of his European family and their sudden separation – a fate he shares with many other German-Mozambican families who are still fighting for their rights today.

Director Brenda Akele Jorde on The Homes We Carry: “20,000 Mozambicans worked hard in the GDR and were cheated out of their money. This story is unjustly not part of the German cultural memory. When Sarah, the daughter of a Mozambican contract worker, talks about her experiences as a black child in Germany after the fall of the Wall, she speaks for many Afro-German children who felt very uncomfortable in their skin and struggled with their blackness for a long time. Like many others, Sarah eventually understands that her identity is not a contradiction, but an enrichment. Telling Sarah’s story means making Afro-German identity and family visible and emotionally tangible.”

Screenings during HOT DOCS 2023:

Apr 28, 8:15 PM – SCOTIA 5
May 1, 11:30 AM – SCOTIA 6