What We Inherit (2025)

HOW TO WATCH

WORLD PREMIERE AT DOC NYC

Friday, November 14, 2025 6:15 PM - IFC Centre

Sunday, November 16, 2025 12:15 PM - IFC Centre

Keep up to date on Facebook for the theatrical release and festival dates 

When Kacim discovers that his ancestors were both pioneers and enslavers, it triggers a reckoning that challenges everything he thought he knew about his family, and himself. As a man of Algerian and American descent, he’s long lived between identities. But this discovery forces him to confront a legacy of land grabs, enslavement, and silence embedded deep within the American story.

His journey takes him to Fairview, North Carolina, where his ancestors claimed Cherokee territory as “war bounty” after the Revolution and built wealth through the labor of enslaved people. As he digs into land deeds, census records, and family documents, a complex picture emerges, one that blurs the line between survival and exploitation, pride and shame.

Along the way, Kacim meets Diana, a woman whose ancestors were enslaved by his family. Their stories are deeply intertwined: two people tied by a name, but shaped by opposite sides of history. Together, they grapple with what it means to share a legacy that includes violence, erasure, and resilience.

What We Inherit is a deeply personal documentary about the weight of history and the stories we carry forward. It explores how land, bloodlines, and buried truths shape identity. What does it mean to take ownership of the past without being owned by it?