I Was Born Under This Tree

I Was Born Under This Tree is a lyrical animated short that follows a young girl as she digs beneath a centuries-old walnut tree and a forgotten stone cross. As she unearths the soil, she weaves together stories passed down through her family: a great-grandfather who died from love, a mysterious neighbor with a pot of honey, buried gold under a lost church, childhood memories of bees hiding honey in the roof of a crumbling clay house, and a birth underneath a tree. Through dreamlike transitions and intimate voiceover, the film explores how family history is not only remembered but felt — through places, gestures, and imagination — inviting us to consider what remains when memory becomes myth.

Director’s statement
I Was Born Under This Tree is a film rooted in personal memory, inherited stories, and rural imagination. It was inspired by the way children absorb family histories, not as fixed facts, but as layered tales full of silence, magic, and contradiction. The characters in the film aren’t just people; they are echoes, repetitions, sometimes even questions left unanswered.