Sophie Vuković

Based on powerful archival material documenting the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, this documentary is accompanied by classic text from The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.

She is on the way out of the house when she sees an envelope. Jamila’s family has received a rejection of their asylum application. She acts as if she doesn’t see it, takes her younger sister to school, and meets up with her friends. But everywhere she turns she sees them – the police.

Tracing her ancestry through her parents’ migration from Eastern to Northern Europe via Australia, we are brought into the home and world of a family both 'moving and tethered. Through a diverse mix of film styles, the director combines the personal and the political through a gentle first-person narration. Relating the experience of globalised and marginalised identities the world over, Shapeshifters beautifully portrays the yearning for a fixed and stable identity, while wholeheartedly embracing the internationalist spirit that transcends the borders implicit in such an identity. Always on the cusp of two or more cultures, Vuković examines the lasting effects of one generation’s choice to migrate on the next.