Finding Family

2014 • 59 minutes

About this movie

Oggi, tensed up behind the wheel of his car, is apprehensive, his nerves plain to see. Familiar territory dims, as he adds miles between himself and the city he loves, the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. He's conflicted about meeting the family that abandoned him, however he is well past the point of no return, and knows it. A Serbian flag waves from the roadside, announcing his entry into Bosnia's Serbian territory. "Boom! Republika srpska", he quips nervously. Oggi's mounting discomfort is clear as he nears his final destination, the family reunion planned by his Serbian ex-combatant uncle, deep in the country's Serb 'heartland'.
First though, Oggi goes on a pilgrimage of his past, revisiting the orphanages of his youth, where new personnel, new beds and a new generation of the abandoned have replaced his memories. At the orphanage, Oggi and his prying camera do not exactly receive a warm welcome, and the crew is forced to film on the street outside. Unwelcome then and unwelcome now, he does not linger long by the crumbling facade.
Only in Sarajevo, his adoptive city, with whose fate his own became inextricably tied, does Oggi seem totally at ease. He is clearly home again as he drives down its streets, delighted to see the capital thriving now, after seeing it suffer all those years ago. "It's really, really nice to see that effort has been put in to make it shine", he says, his voice tinged with emotion.
Leaving behind his comfortable new life in Cambridge, England, Finding Family is a film Oggi Tomic needed to make, in order to resolve unanswered questions about his past: Who are his family? Where do they come from? Why did his mother abandon him? In the process, however, his film asks a more universal question about what makes family, and explores the primeval emotion that is a mother's love.

Ratings and reviews

Beautiful story.

H g yt? Yt? Yt? Tihhih