Araik Zulalyan's animated short, The Home That Is Me, is about a boy searching for a safe home in a world marked by destruction, mistrust, and fragile hope. The boy drags branches through a ruined forest, builds a fragile shelter, and briefly finds comfort inside. Hoping to find friendship with his neighbors, he instead receives a cold shoulder from one and distrust from others as they build their homes. Soon, swarms of flies invade, and neighbors become dangerous; he is forced to wonder where in the world one can truly find safety.
The Home That Is Me is a haunting animated short that utilizes stop-motion animation of puppets made of plasticine set against photorealistic backgrounds, which recall the old Art Clokey Gumby cartoons. The majority of the film is composed of these figures and includes brief flashes of horror and real photos for dramatic effect.
"Swarms of flies invade, and neighbors become dangerous."
The film was born from the director's personal experience of losing a homeland, being displaced as a wartime refugee, and witnessing not only the collapse of buildings but also the erosion of human trust and dignity. Filmmaker Zulalyan says the use of plasticine animation was chosen because it embodies fragility -- it can be molded and reshaped, but it is always vulnerable to destruction. With this imagery, the film speaks to the shared human search for stability, trust, and a place that feels like home, asking whether a true home might exist within us even when the world outside is unstable.
The power of The Home That Is in Me lies in the fact that I haven't lived Zulalyan's life. Having always had a place to call home, millions throughout the world cannot say the same, whether by choice or circumstance. My brain definitely had to wrap itself around Zulalyan's tale and his haunting creatures. The idea of home and security is something many Americans take for granted.