Ancestral Visions of the Future review – visceral cine-memoir is a haunting return to Lesotho
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese pairs his literary-grade voiceover with propulsive, prophetic images to interrogate his identity and that of his colonialism-carved homeland Here is a captivating
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese pairs his literary-grade voiceover with propulsive, prophetic images to interrogate his identity and that of his colonialism-carved homeland Here is a captivating stream of consciousness film about exile, roots and identity by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, director of the lauded 2019 activism story This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection.
It’s ostensibly a cine-memoir looking back from the vantage point of present-day Berlin to his upbringing in Lesotho, narrated by Mosese’s dense, literary-grade voiceover. But there’s something propulsive and prophetic about the accompanying hyper-vivid images from rural and urban life. This is something more than memory. The title screen dedication is ambiguous: “This film is an ode to cinema, an eternal no to my mother.” Reneging on the title of another 2019 work, Mother, I Am Suffocating.
This Is My Last Film About You, she is central to Mosese’s attempt to return to the source. Her aspirations are to keep her family well-dressed and out of poverty, carry them away from the grind of rural fields that “ask not for rain, but for blood”, and see them installed in an ever-expanding house in the city (presumably Maseru).
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