Belonging

I made this film when I first moved to Paris for high school. Not speaking French, I was placed in an immersion program within a French public school. The “Classe d’accueil” brought together international students, many of whom appear in this film. We spent five hours a day learning French, all working toward reaching a B2 level to integrate into the regular curriculum. It felt like a race against time, where language became the key to belonging. George and I arrived on the same day, a boy from Syria and a boy from Macao.

On the surface, we had little in common, but we discovered that we had both lost a parent and had both been Boy Scouts. We were both navigating a new country, a new language, and a shifting sense of identity. Beneath the surface, many of us experienced a quiet loneliness, not just from being far from home, but from not yet having the words to express who we were. In that classroom, we felt like a group of young scouts. We left our homes, to learn a new language, and adapting to a new culture became our shared sense of belonging. This film explores how connection emerges in unfamiliar spaces and how belonging is rebuilt through shared experience. Winner of the Honorary Award at the United Nations PLURAL+ Youth Film Festival, it screened at the UN Headquarters in New York, featured on UNTV, and is now taught in German and US high schools.