Wednesday, June 21, 1:00 pm, Castro + streaming encore (note: California only)
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| This Place |
Kawenniióhstha is half Mohawk, half Iranian, moving to Toronto to pursue her dream of being a poet, as well as her dream of finding the father she has never met, who doesn’t even know he has a daughter. Malai is Tamil, having moved to Toronto with her family to escape the long-running civil war between Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka. Malai and Kawenniióhstha meet by chance, and feel an immediate sense of connection, even as each struggles to find a sense of connection to the cultures they came from and the place where they now live.
We don’t see many stories from a First Nations point of view, and particularly that point of view intersecting with immigrants. This Place brings us into that perspective with sensitivity to all the other life issues the characters are dealing with: coming of age, family, the loss of loved ones, and the beginning of a relationship. It’s definitely worth seeing, highly recommended.
Personal note: part of the film takes place in the Mohawk Nation at Ahkwesáhsne, a First Nation that straddles the borders between Ontario, Québec, and New York. I knew the name because it also has an important footnote in telephone area code lore: the portion of Ahkwesáhsne in Québec uses the area code for southeastern Ontario.
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