No Place Like Home
2023 · 47m · Sri Lanka
Directed by Emilie Beck
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Adopted from Sri Lanka to Norway as an infant, Priyangika travels back to uncover the painful secrets of the international adoption trade.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The setup screams prestige-doc autopsy—trauma-tourism meets identity politics—but Beck sidesteps the expected catharsis; instead she lets the archive and the silences do the real work, which is genuinely unsettling in ways the festival circuit usually sanitizes away.
A formally rigorous interrogation of the adoption narrative that positions itself against the redemptive arc—Beck's editing and structural restraint locate this squarely in the lineage of critical documentary practice, where formal choices become ethical positions.
The decision to let Priyangika's search for records and institutional truth become the film's emotional center rather than a breakthrough moment—that refusal to deliver resolution—is where the whole thing gains its aching specificity and power.