HERO_FILMPortraits of Us
Portraits of Us creates cinematic documentaries about the people who made us who we are. Their stories, their voices, their memories — captured beautifully, and kept for generations.
The Portrait
The stories they always tell. The laugh everyone knows. The relationships, memories and small details that make a person unmistakably themselves.
Through intimate conversations, family voices, photographs and home movies, we create a film that feels less like a biography — and more like them.
The things we remember
How Dad tells that story.
The expression Mom makes just before she laughs.
The way Grandpa says your name.
The stories you've heard a hundred times — and somehow never thought to record.
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Hilde · then and laterWhat a photograph can't hold,
a living cinematic Portrait can.
Living Memories
A remembered moment, given movement again.
BRING A MEMORY TO LIFEA memory, remembered
Sometimes a story survives only in the person who remembers it. From photographs, details and the memory itself, a moment from long ago can be carefully reimagined — allowing us to see something that was never filmed.
A story, seen again
We all carry stories of places, people and moments that exist only in memory. By combining those stories with photographs and the details a person remembers, AI technology can help us carefully recreate the atmosphere of another time — allowing people to revisit a memory and see it come alive. These scenes become part of the Portrait not as historical footage, but as clearly identified, creative interpretations of the moments being remembered.
Recreated memories are always identified within the Portrait, preserving the distinction between authentic archive and creative interpretation.
Discoveries
Stories passed from one generation to another become part of a family's inheritance. And sometimes research reveals stories the family itself never knew.
When a film calls for it, we look beyond the family album to uncover the places, records and forgotten details that enrich the Portrait.
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Family tree
Passport
Family letters
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Family memory
Family record
Marriage record
Military citationThe interviewer
Mikael Ohana
For years, I have had the privilege of sitting across from people living quiet lives and listening to their incredible adventures.
Different lives. Different histories. Different personalities. Again and again, I am reminded of how extraordinary an ordinary life becomes when someone is given the space to truly tell it.
I love film, but more than that, I love people — their contradictions, their humour, their memories, and the thousand small things that make each life entirely its own. That human curiosity is at the heart of every Portrait we make.
“Every meeting is special to me. We take the time to jog the memories, listen for what matters, and create something the family can keep.”BEGIN THEIR PORTRAIT
The Making of a Portrait
Before cameras, there is conversation.
We learn who they are, what shaped them, what the family remembers, and what nobody wants to lose.
Every photograph has something behind it.
Home movies. Letters. Photographs. Places. Family voices. And, when the story leads us there, discoveries from the past.
Not an interview. A conversation.
Unhurried, intimate filming designed to let stories emerge naturally — until the camera begins to disappear.
This is where memory becomes cinema.
Story, image, music, archives, restored photographs and remembered moments are shaped into one deeply personal film.
And for the first time, your family sees its own story looking back.
Why this matters
In someone's memory.
We save the photographs. We keep the letters. We record the birthdays.
But somehow, the stories are the things we assume we'll always have time to ask about.
A reason to begin
FINAL_FAMILY_FILMFuture generations
Not through a photograph.
Hearing her voice.
Watching her laugh.
Listening as she tells you where she came from, what frightened her, what she believed, who she loved, and what she hoped her family would become.
Only a Portrait
for the people who never had the chance to meet them.
Our Portraits
Four stories. Four people and communities. Each told in its own voice.
November 2023 · A CSUQ co-production
A singer whose voice became part of a community's memory.
History · Testimony · Identity
Families remember the worlds they left and the lives they carried forward.
Hommage à Solly Levy Z’L
A life heard through music and the voices of those who knew him.
80 years and counting
A mother. A grandmother. A life shaped by love, resilience, friendship, and the people who became family.
One day, this may becomethe most valuable thingyour family owns.
Start a conversation
Tell us a little about them.
michael@increative.company514-503-2769