Fresno Reel Pride – This Place

SATURDAY, SEPT 30, 2023 \\ 4:30 PM \\ 🔷 VISTA THEATER \\ DIRECTED BY V.T. NAYANI \\ CANADA \\ ENGLISH, TAMIL, MOHAWK, PERSIAN, FRENCH \\ SUBTITLED \\ 87 MINS \\ Two young women navigate love for the first time. Kawenniióhstha, half-Iranian and half-Mohawk, has just moved to Toronto, to pursue her dream of becoming a poet. Raised by her single Kanien’kehá:ka mother in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk territory, she never knew her dad. Her estranged father also lives in Toronto but he does not know she exists. She yearns to meet him, but struggles to make contact. Malai’s father’s alcoholism reaches its peak after her mother dies, pushing her to leave home with her elder brother. Years later, as her father battles terminal cancer, she tries to reconcile with him, while navigating her brother’s refusal to do the same. Through two families complicated by love and loss, this film intimately explores the stories of those living in the liminal space between cultures, displaced both at home and abroad. At the centre of it all remains Kawenniióhstha and Malai, whose journeys we follow together and apart. This film discusses colonialism, civil war, violence, and death.