Three Documentaries That Confront Family Secrets

This week, Kiko Martinez talks with Mexican-Palestinian filmmaker Colette Ghunim about “Traces of Home,” her documentary about reconnecting with her parents’ roots in Mexico and Palestine and the journey toward identity, family reckoning, and healing that follows. Through archival footage, hand-painted animation, and intimate conversations, Ghunim explores the lasting effects of displacement and intergenerational trauma. Plus, our theatrical and streaming picks take on painful family legacies, from an Ecuadorian filmmaker reconstructing his grandfather’s past to a Mexican-American director confronting the abuse and silence that shaped her childhood.

Happy Watching,

— Vanessa

Ecuadorian documentary photographer and filmmaker Misha Vallejo reconstructs a lost family album by using his deceased grandfather's camera, while also learning about the man he never knew. In the process, he uncovers absent fathers, family secrets, violence, racism, and intergenerational trauma that has been carried through his family. Along with the striking photography Vallejo exhibits from his and his grandfather’s perspectives, he uses the camera itself to tell a story, saturating each shot with colorful shades. Through his intimate, introspective lens, Vallejo captures his family's heartache and happiness in each face he frames.

Playing on November 19 at the Dumbo Film Festival in Brooklyn, New York.

Mexican-American filmmaker Jasmín Mara López exposes the childhood sexual abuse she endured at the hands of her grandfather, uncovering a painful history of intergenerational trauma and the silence that allows it to persist. The archival footage takes on a haunting new meaning in light of the film’s subject, as López gradually dismantles the barriers of shame that have kept her family’s pain buried. Her bravery is most palpable when viewers witness her confront her grandfather in a deeply unsettling conversation decades in the making. Through her own words and his, “Silent Beauty” becomes a powerful search for truth.

Streaming on Amazon Prime and PBS Passport.

— By Kiko Martinez

As a child growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, Mexican-Palestinian filmmaker Colette Ghunim was disconnected from both sides of her culture.

Her father and his family were displaced from their home in Safed, Palestine, in 1948 by forces of the Zionist movement that fought to establish Israel. Her mother immigrated from Mexico City to escape an abusive family.

In the documentary “Traces of Home,” filmed over five years, Ghunim embarks on a journey of self-discovery, reuniting her parents with the ancestral homes they were forced to flee as children.