Borders Of Belonging's Fundraiser
Borders Of Belonging
An accusation of racism shocks a female filmmaker on a solo journey across the US to discover what is means to belong in our divisive world.
Borders and Belonging is a feature-length documentary exploring identity and transgenerational trauma through two parallel narratives: a solo roadtrip across 22 U.S. states, and intimate psychodrama reenactments of personal memories filmed in Puerto Rico. These dual threads reveal how inherited wounds shape perception, self-worth, and the stories we tell ourselves.Join me in supporting real change.
I aimed to understand the unfolding of events, my place among falling statues, how to navigate the intricate landscape of American identity, confronting my own preconceptions and biases along the way. The film unfolds on two tracks: One one hand, a solo trip across 22 states in 40 days I conducted over 50 interviews - with cowboys, plantation owners, Q-Anon believers, firearm dealers, democrats, republicans, abolitionists, blacks, whites, Native Americans, across all ages, genders and races. I crossed the country from California hitting the Bible Belt to the Atlantic, from the South to the North stopping even at Dollywood. As I made my way across the country, staying in people’s homes, guest rooms, or tents in backyards, I interviewed them about their worldviews, politics, race, and way of life. Nothing was off-limits—brisket and chicken paprikash, gun laws, border patrols, falling statues, crumbling walls, angry Black women, Eastern European stigma, stolen land, and artificial borders. We discussed it all.
On the other, there are psycho-dramatic segments —a notebook of free associations— giving access to my personal memories:
The dinner where I said “I can relate” instead of “I can understand.” My friends when they called me a racist. Childhood by the Iron Curtain. A house party in Berlin, where I was mistaken for an Eastern European porn star. Leslie, my Hungarian-American friend who stood up for me. My grandmother, who was not allowed to return home to Transylvania after Trianon.
It is more than a documentary—it's a profound meditation on the human experience of displacement, identity, and the search for connection in an ever-changing world. It's a film that transcends geographic boundaries to illuminate the universal longing for acceptance, understanding, and a place to call home.
After personally financing the production phase of the documentary since 2020 until now, we are raising the final sum for post production to bring the movie to life.