This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection offers a rare and poetic view into Lesotho, to May 6 via The Cinematheque
Mary Twala hands in her final powerful performance as a woman standing her ground against a dam
The Cinematheque streams This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection until May 6
THE CINEMATHEQUE IS PRESENTING another standout window into Africa with This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection, Lesotho’s first Oscar submission and winner of the Visionary Filmmaking prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
As remote as its setting is, the film speaks poetically and uncompromisingly to the state of our planet right now—one where pandemic pause has us questioning the mad march toward “progress” and development, the forces of global capitalism, and pending environmental doom.
In the film, the late Soweto-born actor Mary Twala gives an indelible yet often wordless performance as Mantoa, an elderly widow who has lost her last child to a mining accident. With little left to lose, she finds herself standing her ground against a dam that will obliterate her Lesotho village, and force resettlement to the city on its residents—both the living and the buried dead.
Lesotho-born writer-director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese shoots it all with a painterly eye. Wide-skied landscapes play off closeups of Mantoa’s grief-lined face set against a deep cobalt wall, or her gnarled hands making circles in the mud. Occasionally, we see a mysterious storyteller who’s lit like a Rembrandt portrait. (Watch the trailer below for just a small taste of how distinctive Mosese’s cinematic voice is.)
Backed by its angular and hypnotically dissonant soundtrack, it all has a dreamlike feel, as befits a place steeped in spiritualism, myth, and the enduring presence of ancestors. Mosese manages to make This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection feel artful and cutting-edge, while ancient at the same time. And Twala? She grounds it all firmly in the earth, an epic presence who barely needs to utter a word.
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