Shows:
Sunday, 2/26, 1:00 pm

Screening & Conversation
Post-Screening reflection led by Program Curator Osinashi Ibe

In her hypnotic documentary feature, Ethiopian-Mexican filmmaker Jessica Beshir explores the coexistence of everyday life and its mythical undercurrents.

Though a deeply personal project—Beshir was forced to leave her hometown of Harar with her family as a teenager due to growing political strife—the film she returned to make about the city, its rural Oromo community of farmers, and the harvesting of the country’s most sought-after export (the euphoria-inducing khat plant) is neither a straightforward work of nostalgia nor an issue-oriented doc about a particular drug culture.

Rather, she has constructed something dreamlike: a film that uses light, texture, and sound to illuminate the spiritual lives of people whose experiences often become fodder for ripped-from-the-headlines tales of migration. In Amharic, Harari and Oromo with English subtitles.

Director: Jessica Bashir (Ethiopia/US/Qatar 2021) 120 min.