My grandmother once told me that she had a recurring nightmare. She was lost and running through an empty city with no end in sight. Having been present when the shooting began, to mark the beginning of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, it is not hard to imagine this experience planting roots into the labyrinth of one’s mind. I have long been obsessed with identity and its maze-like corridors. As we step through doorways and thresholds, from one ‘life chapter’ to the next, we accept a whirlwind of uncertainty and emotional vulnerability. While this can be an exciting opportunity for reinvention, a sudden loss of one’s bearings can spiral into disorientation - spiritual or otherwise. Having been born and raised to expats in Bangkok, I had the unique privilege of experiencing a sleepless city. It was a place of intermeshed levels of wealth that did not hide its effects on class, race, and gender. Despite being mindful of my otherness and eventual departure from Thailand, I arrived in Australia knowing nothing of its history. Like my grandmother, I was stepping onto foreign shores and began to question what ‘being home’ really meant, or where that home was meant to be. With Bőr, I feel as if I have unearthed something wicked and tonally-etched into my genetic being. It is a kind of lamentation - a dark, abject taint that speaks to a peculiar longing or nostalgia. It is also a thing of self disappointment, yet likewise a beautiful emancipatory discovery and a painfully genuine articulation of things I have felt so deeply for many years. This is a film that veers into being a magic-realist fairy-tale. It shifts between categories and is an amalgamation of many feelings, memories and observations. This elimination of boundaries hopefully speaks to those experiencing the cultural dissonance of not fully attributing oneself to national identities. Cracks within our sense of self may reveal these hidden perversions, sometimes full of melancholic guilt, which spread out and affect those we hold dear. When isolated, the family unit is a site that can breed wounds and deep scars. Anna and her family are an example of such, each suffering alone yet having to share space with the other. Having asked myself what part beauty may play in the aftermath of conflict, my hope is that we can treat some memories with tender care. With this medium, there is a power in its re-construction of events. Often, it has been known to re-create dreams. And with the past, mine or yours, such memories are like dreams, and to remember that we are its results. Sometimes we feel as if we change for better or worse. Change can force us to shed skin, leaving us vulnerable to the surrounding environment. Salvation may elude us in these moments of grief and loneliness, but there is hope in knowing that the sun will rise again, tomorrow, in the morning. For now, at least.