Christina Antonakos-Wallace (Director/Producer/Camera) is a filmmaker and activist. Awards for her short films include the Euromedia Award for Culture & Diversity (2011), a Media that Matters Change Maker Award (2012), and recognition from the German Alliance for Democracy and Tolerance (2015). Her work has shown in over a dozen countries in diverse contexts from Google Headquarters, to NGOs, to film-festivals. Commissions and grants for her work include the New America Foundation, Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, and the German Ministry for Civic Education. She has held residencies at Hedgebrook (2017) and the Port Townsend Film Festival (2015). She graduated with a BFA/BA from the New School & Parsons School of Design with honors. Her work was recognized with a five-year MTV Fight For Your Rights Scholarship (2002) and a Humanity in Action Fellowship (2006), which she completed at the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, in Berlin.

From Here is a personal project that grew from questions of how to advance racial equity in an era of globalization, and the search for her own sense of belonging in the context of her family’s migrations.

The film grew out of very intimate questions. Growing up as a queer girl in the Greek-Orthodox church, I felt torn between my experience and cultural traditions. My involvement in racial justice organizing only compounded confusion that I was assimilating. I didn’t find stories that celebrated adaptation or acknowledged the ambiguities.

After years of searching for belonging, including living in Greece, I began From Here. I had experienced the growing xenophobia in Europe firsthand, and was witnessing the anti-immigrant movement grow in the U.S. I knew that we needed empowering stories of migration and diaspora that broke the myths of cultural and racial purity.

It took time to develop this work. In the tradition of observational cinema, I chose to follow the protagonists long enough for them to grow and to reflect the complexity of their lives. It was essential to my ethical practice that I involve collaborators in both Germany and the U.S. who are impacted by these issues. Over the years, the initiative involved over 100 individuals–more than half from immigrant communities. In doing so, the film sprouted many offshoots. We created an interactive web platform Reimaginebelonging.org, installations, curricula, and short films. We partnered with dozens of community groups, organized or presented at nearly 200 events, and sought feedback at each major turning point. And like most young artists, we had to invent ways of getting things done with limited funding and industry support.

In this historical moment, there is no time to waste in getting From Here out into the world and deepening conversations about belonging. Violent anti-immigrant policies and racist rhetoric is intensifying. We need an avalanche of counter-narratives, including From Here, that show the promise and potential of our increasingly diverse society. Luckily, I have amazing collaborators at my side. We have experience under our belts and plans to get this film out into the world in a substantial way.