Jasmin’s Two Homes

Jasmin gazes in delight at the screen of the laptop she uses to make video calls with her father in faraway Somaliland. She asks him if there are hedgehogs there—an important question, because soon she and her brother and sisters will be living there. Her father once fled the war in his native Somaliland. In Finland, he found a second home, and his four children were born there. But he missed Somaliland, and was tired of the racism in Helsinki, so he decided to return with his family.

This life-changing process is shown from Jasmin’s perspective, a vivacious girl who has to say goodbye to everything that is familiar to her: the cold Finnish winters, the playground nearby and her best friend Maryam. The camera follows her to her new homeland, where the smells and colors are still so strange. Where her new big house is home to a confusing number of family members, who eat without knives and forks. There may not be many hedgehogs, but there are plenty of camels. And, for the first time in her life, people are no longer asking her where she comes from.