Between exile and homecoming, a filmmaker journeys back to Sudan’s devastation to reunite with his parents, uncovering the shattered paths they once took across continents.
Born between wars and borders, Ibrahim has never truly belonged. The son of a Sri Lankan mother and a Sudanese father who met while fleeing their civil wars, he grew up displaced: raised in Lebanon without citizenship, then forced to move to Sudan after his father’s deportation. His sense of home has always been fragile, built and broken by conflict and loss. When war erupted in Sudan in 2023, Ibrahim found himself in exile, unable to return. Since then, he has not seen his parents; contact is sporadic, disrupted by poor networks, bombings and blackouts. With no documents or safe passage, his parents remain trapped, their voices fading in and out of reach.
Haunted by guilt and uncertainty, Ibrahim decides to risk returning – not to stay, but to meet them and make sure they are safe. What begins as a short, dangerous journey becomes a reckoning with his past and his sense of belonging. As he travels back, he revisits fragments of his life: photos, home videos, memories of love and separation and the invisible wounds of migration. Through a hybrid visual language – weaving archival footage, animation, home imagery and vérité – ‘Where Do I Belong’ becomes a personal road film about identity, exile and the fragile meaning of home, and a cathartic attempt to reclaim parts of himself scattered by war.
