Faya Dayi
| Director | Jessica Beshir |
|---|---|
| Year | 2021 |
| Country | Ethiopia, USA |
| Runtime | 2h |
| Language | Amharic, Oromo |
| TMDB | View entry |
Synopsis
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.
Listed at AFS
Archived on the AFS site between Sat, Sep 11 2021 and Wed, Mar 11 2026, across 7 captures. These dates are inferred from Wayback Machine captures and may not be accurate.