When I was ten years old, my little brother and I spent most evenings laid out on a twin mattress in the bathroom of my family’s Mexican restaurant. My mother was on 16-hour shifts alongside my grandmother and aunt, who all worked endlessly to keep the place running. With nowhere to send my brother and I, after a bit of ingenuity, my mother would soon transform the bathroom into our very own home theater.

I remember her setting up a box TV atop two Coca Cola crates, installing a DVD player, and signing us up for an Unlimited Pass to the Blockbuster just walking distance from the restaurant. Every day after school, I’d look forward to swapping DVDs, one after the other, gazing at the TV as adventures of light and shadow danced in that dimly lit bathroom. For a ten-year-old cinephile, this proved that magic could exist in a place I would’ve never imagined; it was as if magic could live anywhere. It never mattered that we laid out on a twin mattress in the bathroom of the restaurant, because wherever we were, we were home.

For me, home is not a place, it’s the memory of my mother’s exhaustion hidden behind a smile, it’s the caress of her worn-out hands, and the magic of light and shadow dancing in that dimly lit home theater. Home is strength, family, and unconditional love.

In Wonderland is a reflection on home and what it means to find home regardless of where you are. As much as we’ve seen films attempt to capture the immigrant experience through the struggle and trauma usually associated with its pursuit, I don’t believe we’ve done enough to celebrate the joy, the heroism, and the spirit of what it means to pursue an adventure in this country. And the courage it takes to keep going or— as we would say in Wonderland, to “follow the rabbit.”

Our film celebrates the journey of finding hope in a new home, and at last, it is an attempt to romanticize the immigrant experience as something magical and worth fighting for.