NCMA Matinee: Faya Dayi (2021)

Faya Dayi (2021). Directed by Jessica Beshir, 118 min., NR, documentary/drama

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

This is a deeply personal project—Beshir was forced to leave her hometown of Harar, Ethiopia, with her family as a teenager due to growing political strife. But 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, Beshir 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.

Image: Courtesy of Janus Films