Huda, a rebellious young girl is brought to live with her new foster parents, a young couple, Maria and Hussin. Whilst Maria and Hussin are excited at the prospect of raising her, Huda reacts coldly to their advances and secretly plans to run away.

A Viddsee Original Production

Director Statement: A Place to Call Home tries to seek out and quietly reconsider - What makes a family? The obvious implication here is with regards to ‘chosen families’ such as the foster family presented in the series but to consider a family with softer relationship dynamics by disentangling the dramatic tropes that come with a family drama.

The series depicts a family that resolves its difficulties and problems through respectful healthy dialogue, understanding and openness. This is something I think not a lot of fiction portrays because - drama and conflict is something you reflexively attempt to heighten to extremes in storytelling but also because it’s not something too familiar or relatable to most people, as I personally think, most families do not work through their conflicts in healthy ways.

The series, however, is not trying to present a family that is shy or lacking in its pains and conflicts but to ensure that it shows a family that continues to function with love by embracing their issues with generosity and respectfulness. Not by resorting to tactics that would compromise those values. They have differences but they are quick to address and nip them in the bud, work on their pain points, compromise for one another and themselves when able and without ever allowing their differences to result in dysfunction.

Honestly, all of this sounds like an idealistic dream.

But that’s also kind of what filmmakers just… do. We present, evoke and conjure such dreams into reality by simply presenting it as a plausible truth. And my dream is simple - to create homes in harmony.

Not just for me. But for everyone else too.