A visit to my mother's home art studio in Texas prompts a deeper exploration into the meaning of home across generations and landscapes.

Filmed in English, Arabic and Turkman (Iraqi) in Lubbock, Texas. HD, 90 min, 2018.

Written, Directed & Filmed by Nadia Shihab
Edited by Avrïl Jacobson
Produced by Talal Al-Muhanna & Nadia Shihab
Associate Producers: Sara Dosa & Lara Sarkissian
Original Music: Mark David Ashworth, Nadia Shihab, Martin Crane
Color/Online by Robert Arnold
Sound Mix by Dan Olmsted
Associate Editors: Nadia Shihab, Sara Booth
Additional Editing by Angad Singh Bhalla (public television cut-down)

With Support from
Sundance Documentary Fund, Center for Asian American Media, Firelight Media, Tribeca Film Institute, World Channel/America Reframed, IFP Doc Lab, Center for Cultural Innovation, ENJAAZ, Formby Fellowship, MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Residency

WINNER, Independent Spirit Awards TRUER THAN FICTION Award, Jan 2020

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE, Austin Asian American Film Festival, May 2019

SPECIAL JURY AWARD, San Diego Asian Film Festival, Nov 2019

SPECIAL JURY AWARD, LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, May 2019

SPECIAL JURY MENTION, New Orleans Film Festival, Oct. 2018

Jaddoland (Film Review), Educational Media Reviews Online, Dec 2020

Intuition and the Power of Reframing Stories, CAAMedia, July 2020

Jaddoland: An intergenerational portrait of love, (land), and loss, The New Arab, June 2020

The Liminal Echoes of the Displaced Soul, Film Inquiry, May 2020

Our Own Creative Processes are Intertwined, World Channel Video Interview, May 2020 (VIDEO)

Spirit Award Winners: The Complete List, Variety, Feb 2020

2020 Spirit Award Winners List, Indiewire, Feb 2020

Kelly Reichardt, Producer Mollye Asher among Spirit Award Winners, Hollywood Reporter, Jan 2020

Films that Transcend Southern Stereotypes, Hyperallergic, Nov 2019

World Channel Pursues Role as Early Stage Co-Producer, CURRENT, Sept 2019

Texas Made Documentaries Shine at Austin Asian American Film Festival, Sightlines, May 2019

Filmmaker Revisits her Lubbock Life in Jaddoland, Houston Chronicle, Nov. 2018

Double Exposure: On the Making of Jaddoland, CAAMedia, July 2018

Q&A with Amal’s Garden Director, AFMI, July 2017

"Intimate, experimental, and beautifully playful."
- Documentary Award Jury, Austin Asian American Film Festival

"Jaddoland is a breath of fresh air: a film not tied down by convention or structure, it playfully and thoughtfully plumbs issues of identity, art, and belonging."
- Clint Bowie, Artistic Director, New Orleans Film Festival

"Lying somewhere between experimental and home movie, filmmaker Nadia Shihab’s debut documentary JADDOLAND is a film as much about the shiftiness of place and personhood, as it is about Shihab’s curiosity as she gets reacquainted with a mother who evolves away from her in surprising ways."
- Christina Ree, San Diego Asian Film Festival

“As Nadia watches, a picture emerges of what an uncareful observer might call assimilation: an outward adjustment obscuring depths of diasporic longing, the doubling and tripling of identities always grounded by that shifting but insistent anchor, the question of home.”
- Jon Kieran, Senior Programmer, New Orleans Film Festival

“Shihab’s palpable love for her mother courses through her film and “Jaddoland” functions both as a tribute to her work and life as well as a sincere interrogation of the idea of “home,” how the concept morphs and evolves depending on one’s own comfort with their journey.”
- Vikram Murthi, rogerebert.com ​

“[Shihab's] contemplation of the meaning of home unfolds also as a deeply moving meditation on the impact of time.
- Lisa Elin, Houston Film Critics Society

​​"Jaddoland’s expansive aesthetics creates new spaces for diverse audience reflections about how identity and culture are not only inherited but re-created and co-created across geography and time."
- Natalie Nesvaderani and Miasarah Lai, Visual Anthropology Review

Grasshopper Film
USHUB
Amazon Prime