A Lot Like You

Year: 2011
Country: USA, TANZANIA
Run Time: 80 minutes

With a father from Tanzania and a mother from South Korea, Eliachi Sadikiel Kimaro is a first-generation African-Asian-American, struggling with her own sense of identity. Ultimately, she realizes the importance of getting in touch with her African roots, and consequently decides to travel back to Tanzania to document her journey through A LOT LIKE YOU. But upon arrival she discovers that here she is more of an outsider than she ever was in America, with nothing but her name connecting her to this foreign world. That is until she almost accidentally bears witness to the stories of the women of her family—stories of trauma and survival they'd never even shared with each other. Trapped in a traditionally male-dominated society, her aunts open up about their pasts of rape and female circumcision. Through their revelations Eliaichi, a victim herself, is able to turn these shared experiences of abuse into a way to interpret her own identity as a woman. And along the way she and finds out she may be a lot more like these women than she ever realized. (In English, KiSwahili, and KiChaga with subtitles) – M.M.

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