Juneco is a community centre in Belgium that provides shelter and guidance to 15 minor refugees until they turn 18. In this multicultural hub, the youngsters integrate and grow up without their families, and friendships are forged. Helen and Dalina, two Eritrean girls, share the same mother tongue, Tigrinya. They find comfort in each other while sharing stories, a religion, songs and uncertainties. Helen, who is on the verge of a family reunion, tries to stay positive and continues to develop her own identity. She is unsure what will happen once her family, whom she has not seen in six years, arrive in Belgium.

Louisiana Mees-Fongang’s debut documentary, How Do You Spell Home? [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], looks at these two girls’ “search for a sense of home” while being “away from home”. The feature is set to world-premiere in the Luminous strand of this year’s IDFA (8-19 November).

Speaking about the making of her project, the helmer explained: “In How Do You Spell Home?, I wanted to observe and show what is left of a ‘home’ for minor refugees. For some, ‘home’ is represented not by a house or a shelter, but by a set of practices. These practices offer more permanence in their repetition, more shelter than any lodging – like, for example, the rituals of a religion or watching a cricket match. For others, what is left is the warmth of a friendship in which their home is their mother language that they share.”

She adds: “To have a multicultural society and social cohesion is richness. We learn and can learn so much from each other. Through How Do You Spell Home?, these minor refugees gain space, get to share their perspectives and show how their identity is transformed as uprooted children of this globalised world. What goes on in their daily lives? What are their fears and dreams? For me, making this film is an essential contribution to the design of Belgium’s and, in a broader sense, Europe’s multicultural society.”

How Do You Spell Home? is a Belgian production by Maarten Bernaerts and Barbara Dyck for Diplodokus, made in co-production with Laurence Buelens for Rayuela Productions, and Simon Vrebos and Tom Bleyaert for VRT. Fabrice Delville and Alain-Gilles Viellevoye, of Beside Productions, served as the project’s associate producers. The film also received backing from the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF), the Brussels Capital Region, the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre, the Belgian Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government and the Pascal Decroos Fund.

Check out our exclusive trailer below: