DOC NYC presents world premiere of 'Traces of Home'

The documentary “Traces of Home” by Colette Ghunim is a tender, fearless debut that unfolds like a mirror held up to memory itself. Blending vérité filmmaking, animation, and archival materials, the documentary traces Ghunim’s deeply personal journey to reconnect her parents with the homes they were forced to leave as children — her mother from Mexico, fleeing domestic violence, and her father from Palestine, displaced from his ancestral land.

- By MAGRIRA Special to the AmNews

Colette Ghunim's father, visiting Palestine, his homeland. (Photo courtesy of DOC NYC)

(Photo courtesy of DOC NYC)

This premiere, part of the 2025 U.S. Competition lineup at DOC NYC, screens during the festival's November 12-30 run at Village East by Angelika, one of New York's most intimate and storied documentary venues.

Filmed over five years, “Traces of Home” unpacks not only a family’s history of uprooting but also the intergenerational echoes of exile and resilience. Ghunim, who grew up in suburban Schaumburg, IIlinois, unearths the quiet survival mechanisms her parents built as they navigated a new life in America. Beneath birthday can dles and school photos lies the haunting absence of “the home that was,” a silence her camera gently, courageously breaks.