Ancestral Visions of the Future

An elderly farmer tears out his eyes and nourishes the fields with his blood. A man walks through the city of Maseru with multiple knives in his back. A desperate mother howls into the darkness to scare away those who would harm her son. These are just a few of the stark images assembled in ANCESTRAL VISIONS OF THE FUTURE by Mosotho filmmaker Lemohang Mosese. Like his two previous features, this new work is both personal and epic, kaleidoscopic and deeply intimate. While observing daily life in the enclave nation, Mosese describes his displacement, both within Lesotho and during his studies in Berlin, depicting himself as an unmoored traveler who turned to the cinema to find a place of belonging. Torn between Africa and Europe, the city and the countryside, as well as between artistic creation and the lure of violent delinquency, Mosese articulates the impossibility of finding roots in one single place. Above all, ANCESTRAL VISIONS OF THE FUTURE speaks to the power of a mother’s love. As a literal throughline, Mosese offers repeated shots of a long, billowing red fabric cutting across the landscape, a life force that is both a river and wound. (Michael Sicinski)

Lemohang Mosese: MOCKED ONE (2014, K), BEHEMOTH OR THE GAME OF GOD (2015, K), MOTHER, I AM SUFFOCATING. THIS IS MY LAST FILM ABOUT YOU (2019), THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT’S A RESURRECTION (2019)