In Sufi tradition, it is said that chewing the khat, a stimulant green leaf, will show you the way to eternity. Jessica Beshir's debut feature is a cinematic trip in the mountains of Ethiopia where Khat has become the most widespread and lucrative crop. Between legend and reality, FAYA DAYI tells the stories of the people living off of this tiny yet powerful leaf. 

Ethiopia's most lucrative cash crop is khat: a plant whose euphoria-inducing leaves are used for everything from the quest for transcendence to making the daily grind more bearable. The plant and its age-old rituals are central to this first feature from Jessica Beshir, who journeys to her father's homeland to explore the cultural and spiritual fabric of the city of Harar. Here, khat affects the lives of nearly the entire population, some of whom yearn to leave. Shot as a stretched-out moment in time in gorgeous black and white, this kaleidoscopic portrait is a captivating sensory immersion that flickers between reality and reverie, punctuated by unforgettable human encounters.

A film by Jessica BESHIR

starring
Mohammed Arif, Hashim Abdi, Biniam Yonas, Urji Abrahim Mumade, Destu Ibrahim Mumade

United States / Ethiopia / Qatar, 2021, Feature documentary, 2h00, in Oromo with subtitles

First Feature

Title: FAYA DAYI
Type: Feature film, documentary
Duration: 120 mins (2h)
Year: 2021
Countries: United States, Ethiopia, Qatar
Language: Oromo (Afaan Oromoo)
Subtitles: English, French

"Faya Dayi is perhaps the first film in Afaan Oromoo playing at the Sundance Film festival, knowing that the world will get to hear my grandmother's beautiful language is truly cathartic to me." - Jessica Beshir

Produced by
Jessica Beshir (Merkhana Films)

Directed by
Jessica Beshir

Written by
Jessica Beshir

Cinematography
Jessica Beshir

Edited by
Jeanne Applegate
Dustin Waldman

PRODUCTION
Merkhana Films
XTR
Neon Heart Productions
Doha Film Institute
Files Collective

with the support of
JustFilms/Ford Foundation
The Open Society Foundation
The Jerome Foundation
Women Make Movies

DISTRIBUTION
United States: Janus Films

OFFICIAL WEBSITE
https://fayadayifilm.com

Released
by Janus Films (USA), on September 3, 2021


FESTIVALS / AWARDS

* Nominee: Gotham Independent Film Award (Best Documentary) /// Gotham Awards 2021

* Nominee: Best Feature Documentary /// FESPACO 2021 (Burkina Faso)

* Nominee /// Festival du nouveau cinéma - FNC 2021 (Canada)

* Nominee /// 2021 SIFF - Seattle International Film Festival (Seattle, USA)

* Nominee (Bright Future) /// 2021 IFFR - International Film Festival Rotterdam (Rotterdam, Netherlands)

* Nominee (International Feature Documentary Competition) /// 2021 Festival international du cinéma des peuples Ânûû-rû Âboro (Poindimié, New Caledonia, France)

* Winner: Golden Athena (Best Documentary) /// Athens International Film Festival 2021 (Greece)

* Nominee: Emerging Cinematic Vision Award /// Camden International Film Festival 2021

* Nominee: Golden Frog (Documentary Films Competition) /// Camerimage 2021

* Nominee: Critics' Choice Documentary Award (Best First Documentary Feature) /// Critics' Choice Documentary Awards 2021

* Nominee: Best Cinematography, to Jessica Beshir /// Critics' Choice Documentary Awards 2021

* Nominee: International Docs Competition (International Dox Award) /// Dokufest International Documentary and Short Film Festival 2021 (Germany)

* Winner: Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award ($7,500) /// Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2021
Jury Statement:
"Lyrically edited, yet balanced with an unflinching eye, this year's award-winning film reveals hard truths and intimate moments. It demands meditative patience from us as an audience. To respond to its bold challenge, we as an audience found ourselves continually giving it what it deserved, despite the difficulty in today's extreme-pace, distractive, and overbearing cultural norms.
Tonally vibrant in rich black and white, we are enriched by this cinematographic achievement. We found the filmmaker's use of the black and white form as a means to subvert colonial gazes and to highlight the care of her treatment of this community. She refuses binaries-showing us a nearly infinite and luminous range of shades in black. We see, for instance, a sumptuousness of color in her exposure of light on khat that mirrors the richness of life and variation of humanity she makes as a conscious choice to edit into our visual and mental frames.
If her range of tonality is such a striking achievement, it is no less so than her representation of Ethiopia, suffused with a loving, nurturing imagery infused by her connections and ties to the community she grew up within. Her work thus innately confronts western biases with her careful construction of people working to survive, her stark honesty about their dire circumstances, yet she never objectifies the circumstances or the people in this film. Further, her recording inside cultural spaces where women aren't traditionally allowed also shows her undeniable power as a trusted artist and storyteller.
As with any great work of nonfiction, it left us as a jury wanting to learn more. Her artistic and technical virtuosity allows audiences to appreciate the universality of themes explored in the film: an ongoing thread reveals people facing dire economic situations who find ways to survive and sometimes thrive. Given that this is her first feature-length film, we can't imagine a filmmaker we'd like to support with greater enthusiasm. As one jury member said, ‘I can't wait to see what else she does in her career!'
-For the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS): Eric Barstow, Kelsey Favret, Wesley Hogan, Jasmine Huff, Quadiriah McCullough, Lynn McKnight, and Elena Rue | www.fullframefest.org/2021-award-winners/

* Winner: Charles E. Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award ($5,000) /// Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2021
Jury Statement:
"We wanted to award an exceptional work of non-fiction storytelling by a filmmaker deeply in tune with her subject, and who has created a transfixing, almost physical experience in her gorgeous first feature. A meditation on hope and pain, Faya Dayi exudes boldness and confidence while displaying a tonal acumen that transcends its medium. We are honored to award this cinematic work of poetry."
-2021 Jurors: Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, David Osit, and Elyse Steinberg | www.fullframefest.org/2021-award-winners/

* Winner: Reva and David Logan Grand Jury Award ($15,000) /// Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2021 (Durham, North Carolina, United States)
Jury Statement:
"The Reva and David Logan Grand Jury award goes towards Faya Dayi, a film that takes us on a dreamlike journey into the highlands of Ethiopia where we follow the cultivation, production, and consumption of the country's cash crop, khat. The jury applauds Jessica Beshir's debut feature and her bold, cinematic choices full of intrigue, poetry, and meticulously composed black-and-white images. Her stunning cinematography coupled with her deep commitment to the indigenous population and land, shatters our expectations of the structural possibilities for the nonfiction art form. The jury's only regret is that they were unable to experience Faya Dayi in its deserved home: the cinema, where they could truly lose themselves in the natural and subtle soundscape and landscape of the director's motherland, Ethiopia."
2021 Jurors: Jesse Moss, Christine Turner, and Stephanie Wang-Breal | www.fullframefest.org/2021-award-winners/

* Nominee: Grand Prix (Best Film) /// Ghent International Film Festival 2021 | 12>23 oct 2021 | www.filmfestival.be (Ghent, Belgium)

* Winner: Audience Award /// Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival 2021 (Canada)

* Nominee: Grand Prix du Jury (Compétition internationale) /// La Roche-sur-Yon International Film Festival 2021 (France)

* Nominee: Grierson Award (Documentary Film) /// London Film Festival 2021 (UK)

* Nominee: Documentary Competition Award /// Seattle International Film Festival 2021 (USA)

* Nominee: Grand Jury Prize (World Cinema - Documentary) /// Sundance Film Festival 2021 (USA)

* Winner: FIPRESCI Prize, to Jessica Beshir /// Visions du Réel Festival 2021 (Nyon, Switzerland)

* Winner: Grand Prix (International Feature Film Competition) /// Visions du Réel Festival 2021 (Nyon, Switzerland)

* International Premiere /// Visions du Réel Festival 2021 (Nyon, Switzerland)

* World Premiere (January 30, 2021) /// Sundance Film Festival 2021 (USA)