Synopsis
Born into the Chinese community of Costa Rica, Nicole Chi Amén was never able to communicate with her grandmother Guián, who did not speak Spanish. After her grandmother’s death, the filmmaker embarked on a journey to China to reconnect with her roots and to reinvent, through cinema, the dialogue she never had the chance to share.
A word from Tënk
Languages connect us, but they also separate us. Between generations, across continents, they sometimes draw invisible boundaries at the very heart of families. How can one express love when words fail? How can memory be passed on when it meets the untranslatable? It is in this fragile space, between silence and inheritance, that Nicole Chi Amén’s film takes place.
Rather than a genealogical investigation or a linear narrative, the filmmaker composes a work of traces and resonances. Every filmed gesture becomes an attempt at connection, every shot a space where bonds interrupted by exile are reinvented. Her camera captures the details of daily life, faces, and silences, to convey what language can no longer carry.
This first feature documentary thus explores transmission through absence, revealing that identity is not limited to a spoken language, but is also built in the gaps, the fractures, and the misunderstandings. By filming what remains when words are lacking, Nicole Chi Amén offers us a sensitive meditation on diasporic memory and the possibility of legacy through cinema.
Miryam Charles
Filmmaker
