Overview:
Documentaries at CAAMFest 2026 explore generational memories that shape the lives of immigrants trying to belong
Rediscovering roots @ CAAMFest 2026
We often use the metaphor of trees to describe the immigrant experience – transplanted, uprooted. The analogy is so natural that we compare the process of finding our orientation in the new landscape to “growing roots.” We prune ourselves constantly to fit in – finding a job, meeting new people, learning a new language. But the price we pay for adapting and assimilating, the pasts we are forced to bury and the parts we discard, leave their mark. The scar tissue is called a callus in humans and trees alike, which seals the wound in a process called compartmentalization.
While we are busy making homes for our children, they notice something else in us. They notice our calluses and compartmentalization. They notice the shadows of our phantom limbs. The shadows that hide the shape of the histories we fled from or simply walked out on. These shadows, unbeknownst to us, seep into their lives like sticky sap, and the only way they scrub free is by digging into our secret places, our compartments.
This excavation is the theme of some excellent documentaries, Traces of Home by Collette Ghunim, The Gas Station Attendant by Karla Murthy, and The Dao of Thao by Khai Thu Nguyen, playing at CAAMFest 2026, May 7 – May 10, in San Francisco.
CAAMFest docs spotlight belonging
Traces of Home: In one sequence, Colette Ghunim asks her brother if he ever felt at home at home. His nervous response is an eloquent answer in itself. For both, there was a sense of sadness that pervaded their home despite their parents’ best efforts to create a fairytale-like “simple, safe, American, very American”childhood for them. To make sense of this and her own rage at her mother Iza, Ghunim plans two journeys – one to Safed, Palestine, to look up her father Hosni’s home, which he was forced to flee along with his family when he was four, and to Mexico City to her mother’s ancestral home that she, along with her mother and other siblings, had to flee due to her abusive father. Using a combination of home video footage her father took as a wedding videographer and current footage, the film follows the family on their deeply moving journeys to find their “home.”
The Gas Station Attendant: Like Colette Ghunim, Karla Murthy makes a similar effort to understand her adoring father, H.N. Shantha Murthy’s need to “keep on moving,” which manifests in moving from one business idea to another, including a stint as a gas station attendant, in his effort to keep the family financially afloat. In a reversal of roles, the filmmaker turns into her father’s parent-like confidante, recording stories of his childhood on the streets of Bangalore, and his miraculous escape to America during their trips together to sell gift trinkets at trade fairs. Made from home video footage, The Gas Station Attendant is a haunting homage to the gregarious man Karla Murthy was worried about and was puzzled by, but felt inadequate to help.
The Dao Of Thao: This documentary follows performer Thao P. Nguyen as she navigates motherhood while trying to belong to and rebel against the various boxes she finds herself in — mother, sister, daughter, artist, Asian, American and Queer. The film combines intimately shot scenes of Thao and her family exploring their history of moving to America from Vietnam. Her performance sketches blend comedy and drama that show Thao confronting her anxieties as a queer person and a young mother in hilarious and deeply moving ways, and coming up with the overwhelming sense of feeling “not enough,” no matter what. The documentary explores the role of art as a way of talking about things too difficult to discuss openly.
CAAMFest 2026
Dates: May 7–10, 2026
Tickets: Prices range from $13 to $80.
More Info: Visit CAAMFest.com for tickets and full programming.
