Filmmaking is a powerful process of psychosocial repair. To delve into fragmented memories, confusing chronologies and unknown histories, and slowly piece it together allows us to shape a whole story and imbue it with new meaning. The lens can provide a seemingly objective witness, often helping difficult conversations unfold. In the edit, we watch and rewatch, gaining agency over our story. From confronting state violence and reckoning with personal grief in My Father and Qaddafi (Dir. Jihan), to truth-telling and emotional legacy under apartheid in My Father’s Son (Dir. Elan Gamaker), we explore how storytelling through documentary filmmaking becomes a kind of suture, drawing the edges together with care so that something whole can finally emerge.
