Synopsis
Tatjana is a citizen of Europe, or so she tells herself. She has never lived anywhere long enough to feel at home, and now she is stuck in Amsterdam’s notorious neighbourhood, with her teenage son who cringes at her Slavic accent and her inability to be properly Dutch.
Determined to finally crack it, she goes looking for belonging the way she does everything, with a camera.
She travels Europe, knocking on the doors of relatives and friends scattered as gastarbeiters and expats. Along the way she meets people who emigrated decades ago but never really left their villages, people who built new lives without looking back, and two sisters in Germany, old now, holding hands, who found their belonging in each other.
Visiting her father, she finds an answer she wasn’t expecting, one that reframes her whole life not as rootlessness but as the consequence of something done, long ago, out of love.
Fragments of Belonging is a documentary dramedy about migration, motherhood, and the family patterns we carry without knowing.
Synopsis
Tatjana is a citizen of Europe, or so she tells herself. She has never lived anywhere long enough to feel at home, and now she is stuck in Amsterdam’s notorious neighbourhood, with her teenage son who cringes at her Slavic accent and her inability to be properly Dutch.
Determined to finally crack it, she goes looking for belonging the way she does everything, with a camera.
She travels Europe, knocking on the doors of relatives and friends scattered as gastarbeiters and expats. Along the way she meets people who emigrated decades ago but never really left their villages, people who built new lives without looking back, and two sisters in Germany, old now, holding hands, who found their belonging in each other.
Visiting her father, she finds an answer she wasn’t expecting, one that reframes her whole life not as rootlessness but as the consequence of something done, long ago, out of love.
Fragments of Belonging is a documentary dramedy about migration, motherhood, and the family patterns we carry without knowing.
Directors Motivation
Fragments of Belonging is an emotional dramedy with a touch of nostalgia for all that is lost when we move, adapt, and belong nowhere entirely. It explores the loss of roots, community, and identity through the lens of migration and motherhood. As I discovered while making the film, the feeling of not belonging often begins long before we cross borders, it starts within our own families. This film is my attempt to own that story, to turn loss into connection.
Directors Motivation
Fragments of Belonging is an emotional dramedy with a touch of nostalgia for all that is lost when we move, adapt, and belong nowhere entirely. It explores the loss of roots, community, and identity through the lens of migration and motherhood. As I discovered while making the film, the feeling of not belonging often begins long before we cross borders, it starts within our own families. This film is my attempt to own that story, to turn loss into connection.
TATJANA BOŽIĆ
Croatian-born and Amsterdam-based, Tatjana Božić makes films wherever life takes her – Croatia, Russia, England, the Netherlands. With an MA in Television Journalism and a postgraduate degree from Moscow’s Higher School for Screenwriters and Directors, she learned her craft during Perestroika, taught by Artavazd Peleshian and Wim Wenders in the same smoky screening room where Tarkovsky once showed forbidden classics.
Trained in life coaching, EMDR, family constellations and drama therapy, she brings insight into the human soul to her film work. Her feature Happily Ever After (2014) premiered in Tiger competition at IFF Rotterdam, won a Gouden Kalf, and was theatrically released across the France, Netherlands, Croatia and Slovenia. Co-founder of LEWA Productions in Zagreb and Spacedust in Amsterdam, she works as a director, scriptwriter, creative producer, and script and editing doctor.
Tatjana is a graduate of Documentary Campus Masterschool, EAVE and ExOriente.
Tatjana Bozic
Croatian-born and Amsterdam-based, Tatjana Božić makes films wherever life takes her – Croatia, Russia, England, the Netherlands. With an MA in Television Journalism and a postgraduate degree from Moscow’s Higher School for Screenwriters and Directors, she learned her craft during Perestroika, taught by Artavazd Peleshian and Wim Wenders in the same smoky screening room where Tarkovsky once showed forbidden classics.
Trained in life coaching, EMDR, family constellations and drama therapy, she brings insight into the human soul to her film work. Her feature Happily Ever After (2014) premiered in Tiger competition at IFF Rotterdam, won a Gouden Kalf, and was theatrically released across the France, Netherlands, Croatia and Slovenia. Co-founder of LEWA Productions in Zagreb and Spacedust in Amsterdam, she works as a director, scriptwriter, creative producer, and script and editing doctor.
Tatjana is a graduate of Documentary Campus Masterschool, EAVE and ExOriente.
Filmography
2014 Happily Ever After (83 mins) – Creative documentary – Tiger Award Competition, IFF Rotterdam; Golden Calf for Best Editing
2010–2011 Surprising Europe (9×25 mins) – Documentary series – Al Jazeera English
2003–2005 A Woman with a Camera/My Sister Eastern Europe (12×22 mins) – TV series – Broadcast during prime time on Croatian state television (HRT)
2002 Dear Suzy (40 mins) – Short documentary – Fade in/B.a.B.e., Kvinna till Kvinna (Sweden)
1996 Provincial Girl (30 mins) – Short documentary – Sheffield FF, Best Russian Documentary at the Yekaterinburg Russian Documentary Film Festival 1995
Facts
Genre:
Creative Documentary
Length:
80 / 52 min
Director:
Tatjana Božić
Screenplay:
Tatjana Božić, Jacob Gesink
Producers:
Magdalena Petrović
LEWA
(Croatia)
Frank Müller
DOPPELPLUSULTRA FILMPRODUKTION
(Germany)
Jacob Gesink
SPACEDUST productions
(The Netherlands)
Countries of Production:
Croatia, Germany, The Netherlands
Countries of Filming:
The Netherlands, Croatia, Austria, Germany; Switzerland
Languages:
Croatian, Dutch, English, German
Release:
April 2024
Facts
Genre:
Creative Documentary
Length:
80 / 52 min
Director:
Tatjana Božić
Screenplay:
Tatjana Božić, Jacob Gesink
Producers:
Magdalena Petrović
LEWA
(Croatia)
Frank Müller
DOPPELPLUSULTRA FILMPRODUKTION
(Germany)
Jacob Gesink
SPACEDUST productions
(The Netherlands)
Countries of Production:
Croatia, Germany, The Netherlands
Countries of Filming:
The Netherlands, Croatia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland
Languages:
Croatian, Dutch, English, German
Contact
Let’s keep in touch
DOPPELPLUSULTRA
FILMPRODUKTION GmbH
Repsoldstraße 45
20097 Hamburg
Germany
mail@doppelplusultra.de
www.doppelplusultra.de
Stichting SPACEDUST productions
Kelbergen 261
1104 LM Amsterdam
The Netherlands
info@jacobgesink.com
www.spacedustproductions.com



