Tatjana is a citizen of Europe, or so she tells herself. She has never lived anywhere long enough to feel at home, and now she is stuck in Amsterdam's notorious neighbourhood, with her teenage son who cringes at her Slavic accent and her inability to be properly Dutch.
Determined to finally crack it, she goes looking for belonging the way she does everything, with a camera.
She travels Europe, knocking on the doors of relatives and friends scattered as gastarbeiters and expats. Along the way she meets people who emigrated decades ago but never really left their villages, people who built new lives without looking back, and two sisters in Germany, old now, holding hands, who found their belonging in each other.
Visiting her father, she finds an answer she wasn't expecting, one that reframes her whole life not as rootlessness but as the consequence of something done, long ago, out of love.
Fragments of Belonging is a documentary dramedy about migration, motherhood, and the family patterns we carry without knowing.
| Producer: |
Magdalena Petrović |
| Director: |
Tatjana Božić |
| Script: |
Tatjana Božić, Jacob Gesink |
| Camera: |
Sven Jacobs |
| Editing: |
Sven Jacobs, Tatjana Božić, Vanja Kovačević, Frank Müller |
| Director of photography: |
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| Others: |
Executive producer HBO Original: Hanka Kastelicovà
Producer HBO Original: Tereza Bóna Keilová
Co-producers: Frank Müller - Doppelplusultra
Co-producers: Sven Jacobs, Tatjana Božić - Spacedust productions
Cinematography consultant: Ton Peters NSC
Original music Sterre Hond & Alex Simu
Colourist: John Thorborg
Sound: Jan Dejozé
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Fragments of Belonging is an emotional dramedy with a touch of nostalgia for all that is lost when we move, adapt, and belong nowhere entirely. It explores the loss of roots, community, and identity through the lens of migration and motherhood. As I discovered while making the film, the feeling of not belonging often begins long before we cross borders, it starts within our own families. This film is my attempt to own that story, to turn loss into connection.