“I didn’t choose to be here.”
In the film’s opening sentence, Yusef Al Windawi describes the feeling that “Pinball” sets out to explain. Born in Baghdad, Al Windawi moved from Iraq to Egypt to Louisville, Kentucky, where he spent the rest of his adolescence.
“Pinball” chronicles Al Windawi’s journey toward reclamation, acceptance and discovering how to navigate an identity torn in different directions: wanting to carve out a future for himself within his parents’ sacrifice, and the diasporic feeling of figuring out where his place in the world is.
This feeling is echoed in how Al Windawi uses exercise as a means of locating himself when geography, memory and identity feel less certain. Scenes of him taking deep breaths as he plunges into an ice bath or begins a workout play alongside the louder breathing of his memories in Egypt.
Al Windawi’s journey takes on a new dimension when he returns to Egypt with his sister, Azraa, and the film crew. Egypt is not quite home, but it carries the gravity of one.
Al Windawi is able to reclaim a form of nostalgia that was taken away from him when he stops at a small restaurant near the apartment where his family once lived. As he takes a bite of a dish from his childhood, his entire expression changes, eyes brightening.
When they eventually return to Louisville, there is a clear shift in both Al Windawi and his sister: They must confront a choice that could change their lives and the introspective appreciation for their loved ones.
In its world premiere, the film is especially poignant as the U.S. continues its legacy of political interference in the Middle East. Throughout the film, Al Windawi and his family reckon with living in the very country that contributed to the destruction of their own.
“America is the reason why a lot of Iraqis are displaced,” Al Windawi said after the screening. “So it’s almost, like, hypocritical that we move here after the war that they waged on us. But it wasn’t really my choice. It was my family, and they decided to come here.”
Chaubal places heavy emphasis on the meaning of an immigrant story from the Midwest. It’s a story not often told, the microcosm of communities that form when one has no choice as to where they immigrate.
As the film ends, Al Windawi ties up his laces, locks the door and begins his warm-up. He jogs off an American porch, carrying an Iraqi heart and a soul comfortably in between.
Despite feeling like Al Windawi’s story was not over yet, “Pinball” ends on its quiet thesis: Home may never have been tied to a single place at all. It lives instead in the people who shaped those memories — the family who carried them across the cyclical aftershocks of foreign policy, and the people who carry that constant thread of comfort and familiarity.
“Regardless of where I live, as long as I have my family, I feel at home,” Al Windawi said.
You can keep up with The Maneater’s 2026 True/False Film Fest coverage here.
