When college kids come home, they eat like they've been homeless all this while. And in a sense they have. Food is the thread that ties us to our home and our families. Especially when we're away. Like many other aspects of Identity which is forged first and foremost within the households, this is where our palate is formed. And as we grow older and leave the nest we seek the flavours that transport us, often inadvertently, to the place, people and culture we came from.
It’s this emotional and cultural tether that Sulaimani, an animated short film by Vinnie Ann Bose, so delicately explores. Through captivating 2D illlustrations and stop motion storytelling, the film uses an unexpected encounter of two Malayali women in France, to take us through immigrant life and the different ways home finds us after we've left it behind.
The film was supported by CNC, France’s national film board and produced by Girelle Production with co-writing by Patricia Valeix. It received the Ciclic prize at the Festival National de Film d'Animation de Rennes, which provided funding and a 3-month residency at Ciclic Animation in Vendôme, where Vinnie and her team built the detailed puppets and sets that make the restaurant come alive.
The story begins on a metro during Christmas, where Alia, our protagonist notices Neena, a woman speaking on the phone in Malayali who forgets her tiffin on the seat as she gets off the train. Alia, to return it, follows her into a South Indian restaurant called Sulaimani. There, in a gesture familiar to anyone who has grown up with South Asian hospitality, Alia is asked to stay for dinner.
In this Parisian Indian restaurant, food becomes the vehicle through which the stories of these two women unfold. Their juxtaposition as characters paints a portrait of how immigrants reconcile with leaving home as well. Alia, has short hair, piercings and is dressed in Western attire. She has no plans of visiting home for the holidays. When asked by the Chef at Sulaimani, she even denies being Indian. Neena on the other hand is in a salwar kameez, a braid and a bindi. She still speaks French in a South Indian accent.
All of this points to the different conditions in which they left home. Neena, a mother, came to France for work after her husband lost his job, leaving her children behind. Alia's father wasn't speaking to her when she left to study abroad instead of getting married. One story is shaped by duty, the other by defiance. And yet the emptiness, longing and a yearning to belong is shared by both. In the film, home and an immigrant's relationship with the idea of it takes many forms, like language, clothes, and food.
Vinnie began writing the short film in 2018, shortly after completing her master’s degree at La Poudrière in France. "It was a time when I was experiencing homesickness but also a time when I was starting to feel at home in France," she says. This internal contradiction around identity and uprooting became the foundation for the film and its characters. Moreover, she was driven by a desire to bring Malayali culture and language into the frame which are rarely seen on screen, and to mirror her own longing for the familiar, especially for Kerala food, which was difficult to find in France.
What makes one, especially a woman from Kerala, leave her home? Exploring this question brought the themes of the place of a woman in Indian society, the weight of patriarchy on a woman's shoulders, the societal and cultural pressure, emancipation and uprooting. I wanted to juxtapose these reasons with homesickness, nostalgia and longing for comfort which I feel is achieved often through food.Vinnie Ann Bose
Sulaimani is a sharp and melancholic portrait of the dissonance between culture and identity, highlighting how it exists as both a gift and a burden. Through Alia and Neena, we see two opposing responses to migration — one of assimilation and one of preservation. Both women are adrift in different ways, trying to reconcile with what they had to sever in order to begin again. The film through a loving but painful montage of two families depict the emotional cost of that loss. And yet it leaves us with a meditation of home which is ultimately a shifting set of meanings that we carry and are reminded of — sometimes by a recipe; sometimes by a song; and sometimes in the company of a stranger who reminds us who we used to be.
Follow Vinnie here and watch the trailer of the short film below:
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