“Memory Is Our Homeland” by Jonathan Durand

“Memory Is Our Homeland” by Jonathan Durand

12/02/23
19:00

The search for the erased history of Polish refugees in East Africa during WWII

Memory Is Our Homeland’ chronicles filmmaker Jonathan Durand’s attempt to piece together the story of his grandmother’s childhood as a Polish WW2 refugee in East Africa. Shot over 10 years, the film combines fragments of documents, photographs, and stories, to reconstruct a missing chapter of the Second World War: Polish citizens deported to Siberia after the Soviet annexation of Eastern Poland, who ended up in the Middle East and Africa as refugees. Through the overlapping journeys of the characters and the filmmaker, ‘Memory Is Our Homeland’ is a meditation on how, in the face of erasure, history and culture are passed on in stories.

Jonathan Durand is a documentary filmmaker and photographer from Montreal, Canada. He studied Political Science and Philosophy at McGill University (BA), after which he spent several years living and working as an educator in Asia and East Africa. Since 2009, he has been pursuing a career as a director, cinematographer, and photographer. ‘Memory Is Our Homeland’ premiered at the Montreal International Documentary Festival in November 2018, where it won the People’s Choice Award, and has since screened internationally on Al Jazeera ‘Witness’, and at numerous festivals and institutions (DocLisboa, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Krakow Film Festival).