Weaving together interviews with those who knew her grandmother – from her grandmother’s best friend who emigrated to Costa Rica before her, to her younger brother to her children – Amén constructs a portrait of the Chinese-Costa Rican community, of the traces of her grandmother that still exist in the community who knew her. While learning more about her grandmother, she feels a pull to visit Engping where her grandmother grew up, to visit the house that she abandoned. Navigating a country that she doesn’t know, with a language she doesn’t speak, Amén confronts both her fantasies and desires for a culture she thought she knew.

Throughout the documentary, Amén is interested in how space constructs history – of the physical remnants of ‘home’. By focusing on the material constructions of a home – Amén considers what keeps us connected to the past. If her home in Costa Rica is demolished, if her grandmother’s is replaced, what will remain out of those ruins? In Chinese, ruin is translated as xu, a ‘void’ or an ‘emptiness’. In the current age of urbanisation, we see constant construction and destruction, of physical memories being replaced and erased. Amén seems to ask: how can we feel rooted on the edge of destruction?

The screening is presented in partnership with Sine Screen and will be followed by a virtual Q&A with the director, who is based in Costa Rica.