Colette Ghunim
Filmmaker Colette Ghunim discusses her award-winning documentary “Traces of Home.” The film follows Colette and her parents as they return to Mexico and Palestine — the homelands they were forced to leave — to confront intergenerational trauma, displacement, and explore her cultural identity.
Colette shares the nine-year journey of creating this deeply personal documentary, from convincing her hesitant parents to participate to winning the Grand Jury Prize for Best U.S. Documentary at the 2025 Documentary NYC Festival. She opens up about how the filmmaking process became an unexpected tool for healing family wounds, bridging the gap between generations, and understanding the lasting impact of colonization and migration.
The conversation explores the parallels between Mexican and Palestinian diasporic experiences, the challenges of being a woman of color in documentary filmmaking, and how art can serve as medicine for collective trauma.
This episode of The Latino Newsletter podcast was produced by Joaquín Cotler, Juan Diego Ramírez, and Michelle Zacarias. Julio Ricardo Varela edited the conversation. The music is by Cast of Characters via Soundstripe.
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Julio Ricardo Varela edited and published this edition of The Latino Newsletter.
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