This film is a gift! […] Afterwards, I felt truly inspired to open up and have deep conversations.
–Jana, 52
It is not easy to make a personal documentary, but bringing it out into the world can be harder still. You never know how people will respond, and whether the personal story you tell will translate to their experiences. So when Grains of Sand had its world premiere at Thessaloniki Documentary Festival in Greece this March, I sat down in the audience, nervous about what people who were seeing the film for the first time would (or wouldn’t) feel.
But as the film progressed, watching my mom and Barbara age on screen caught me up as it always does – and when the film was over, I had tears in my eyes. As the lights came on, I saw many people in the audience were quietly wiping away tears as well.
Somehow the film spoke to them about truths in their own lives. In the Q&A discussion afterwards, one woman reflected that it inspired her to imagine more concretely what she would be doing in fifty years. Would she also have a passion like that? Another viewer said he wished he’d asked his mother those kinds of questions while she was still alive.
That sumptuous cinema became a safe space where people shared in an intimate way about how the film had touched them or made them think differently about someone in their own lives, be it their grandmother, older colleague or a friend. We stayed talking until they kicked us out.