synopsis

What happens when you cultivate a seedling of an idea through germination? How do you take care of it even while dormant? 

we are seeds is an intimate portrait of Afeefeh and amaranta’s creative journeys through the Michigan seasons. 

In Dearborn Heights, Afeefeh, an Arab American sustainability organizer and designer, invites us into her home garden. Listening to what the earth needs is an iterative process, as her gardening philosophy is a practice of creative experimentation and adaptation to both seasonal cycles and effects of climate change. Afeefeh grows luffa, an homage to her Lebanese heritage, harvesting its sponge as an extension of her passion in organizing a hyperlocal circular economy.  

In Troy, Amaranta tinkers with her phone and an old family camera, testing self-taught editing skills towards making her first film. She explores her complicated relationship to the land that her parents immigrated to decades ago, capturing the life cycle of a nopal from Mexico. In documenting Michigan’s beauty through scenes of stillness, the artist discovers a deeply rooted love for the place where she grew up.    

This film prompts us to reflect on how our own environment shapes us and how it can be cared for; a quiet meditation on the interconnected ways we cultivate our own futures as citizens of the earth.