Mother, I am Suffocating. This is my Last Film About You
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- Directed by: Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese
- Released: 2022 (educational)
- Year of Production: 2019
Running Time: 76 min
Language: English
Subtitle Options: English Closed Captions
Subjects: Africa Studies, Religion and Spirituality Studies
The people on the dusty streets of Lesotho stare inquisitively at the young woman, who, like Jesus, carries a wooden cross on her back. She looks back into their faces, at mystically beautiful landscapes, a herd of sheep, and a pair of hands that knit unceasingly. What she sees is rendered more visually precise by the black and white, more abstract by the slowed-down images, it is filtered through memories. A raw voice-over - aware that it is not being heard by those being addressed - structures the flow of images into a cinematic lament. In this essay film, Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese succeeds in creating the chronicle of a radicalising sorrow, which steadily increases in scope from a personal farewell to the mother to a politically aware defection from the motherland. The painful process of shifting from an internal view of the small African country to an external one is visualised and commented on in a profoundly personal way - from the perspective of today, in exile, in Berlin. A pretty angel accompanies the passage. In intense, aching fashion, this unusual lament on an African story of migration sheds light on an realm of experience that is taboo and not only in cinema.
2019 Official Selection at Berlin International Film Festival & Sheffield International Film Festival
About the filmmaker
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese is a self-taught filmmaker from Lesotho, based in Berlin. His film Mother won six awards at the Final Cut in Venice workshop and went on to premiere at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival. He was one of three filmmakers selected for the Biennale College—Cinema lab, with his feature film This Is Not A Burial, It’s A Resurrection. Mosese is an alumnus of many programs, including Focus Features' Africa First and Cinéfondation's L’Atelier.
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