Duration: April 2026 – March 2029

I Come From Where I Am Going is a participatory project that will result in the production of a documentary film and a series of public engagement activities with civil society. While it focuses on Afghan mobility and itinerant lives, the project also opens up a broader reflection on human mobility more generally.

The project is a collaboration between anthropologist Alessandro Monsutti and filmmaker Mohammad Mehdi Zafari. Conceived as a participatory process, it creates a dialogue between personal narratives, collective memory and global questions surrounding migration. At its core, the project listens to and amplifies the voices of those who experience instability as part of their everyday lives.

Project Components

• Documentary Film: A 26-minute documentary tracing transnational networks and migration strategies. Built on personal testimonies, the film draws on the visual archives of the two collaborators to tell intimate and interconnected stories of mobility.
• Screenings and Public Discussions: The film will be presented through a series of screenings accompanied by public debates, creating space for dialogue with audiences around the issues raised.
• Travelling Micro-Exhibition: A mobile exhibition featuring images, story fragments and objects linked to life in migration. Presented alongside screenings and discussions, it aims to extend the project’s reach beyond individual events.

Aims and Approach

Through these outputs, the project seeks to shed light on trajectories that are often marginalised or overlooked. It aims to contribute to ongoing public debates on migration, which remain highly charged and polarised.

At its heart, the project advances a simple yet powerful message: migration is not a recent anomaly produced by globalisation, but a constant throughout human history. For generations, past and present, it has represented more than a response to poverty or violence; it is, more fundamentally, a way of being in the world.