Familiar Phantoms is an experimental documentary short film about memory, history and trauma. Familiar Phantoms is inspired by anecdotes from Sansour’s own family history and her old childhood in Bethlehem, making it her most personal film to date. Combining live action scenes, Super 8 footage and private photos, the editing mimics the workings of memory, constantly revisiting the same imagery alongside new fragments in search of meaning. The live action scenes are shot in a derelict mansion, serving as the seat of memory. In the rooms, vignettes are played out, adding a theatrical dimension, enlarging and exaggerating the narrative components, just as memory perpetually reworks, reinforces, adds and subtracts.