Mia’s past could be called trauma. Deep drawers, filled with objects and fragments of a childhood scarred by her father’s sexual abuse. A film that both recreates and redirects — a place where healing is not arrival at the shore, but an exploratory, intentional drift.
Revisiting childhood should always be accompanied by beautiful and colorful memories, but for some, recreating the past is like falling into an abyss filled with ghosts. In this film, the house that should have been the cradle of infancy is reconstructed in all its spatial details, where the most heinous episodes fit. In Home is Where the Heart Is, the past is not merely remembered; it is laid bare in all its horror through a performance that uses virtual reality to reconstruct the house where Mia lived through an abusive childhood. Every detail of the structure, every object that fills it, is a vestige of violence, attempts at disembodiment, and silences.
“I had the feeling that something precious just broke. That’s exactly how I felt when I passed through the door of that house.” The memory of a broken home redefines the adult in subtle ways that link violence to love and reproduce it in the search of affection and understanding. We need to rebuild this house in order to tear it down to the sound of Wim Mertens’ music, which vocalizes emotions when all words have already been spoken and what remains is revolt and action. (Margarida Moz)
