Poems become photographs that become moving images in this poignant exploration of family, memory and loss, as an artist finally returns home.

In Ikom, Cross River State, Nigeria, filmmaker and artist Ofem Ubi interrogates what can be brought back when an artist has left home to develop their craft, and which forces inevitably call them home. His grandfather reflects on his precious handwritten records of wives, children and grandchildren, as the space left by Ubi’s grandmother leaves a hole in the community’s consciousness. Back on Home Soil (2023) began as a poetry and photography project, tracing the filmmaker’s family history through ruminations and photographs shared with his community. It takes its latest form as a touching film that archives this process, continuing its pursuit to find how memory, family and time can cope in the search for normalcy, after having been seared by loss.