Mexican Ethiopian filmmaker Jessica Beshir’s Faya Dayi (2021) serves up an atmospheric meditation on rural life in Ethiopia, where Oromo farmers have replaced their former staple crops—coffee, sorghum, etc.—with khat, a plant with psychoactive properties. Partially forced into this business by a repressive regime, the farmers bemoan their fate while also often getting high on their own supply (one man praying to the Creator, angrily cries, “Chew! Chew! Chew! It’s alright”).
Watching their elders slide into soporific resignation, members of the younger generation are often split between rebellion against the system and a determination to emigrate to Europe to find a new life.
The film partially focuses on two such young men: Ibrahim Mohammed and his younger, 14-year-old friend, Mohammed Arif. The former works in a warehouse where khat plants are sorted and then trucked out for sale; the latter makes market runs for various members of the community, including a recumbent older khat user who warns the boy against chewing. Mohammed already has a good reason for abstention, observing that his own father becomes “crazy” while chewing khat.
None of this is presented in anything like a straightforward manner. Shot in black-and-white, Beshir’s documentary is a narratively fragmentary, kaleidoscopic, and decidedly languid exploration of her subject matter, cutting between scenes of khat harvesting, people singing and dancing, birds circling, children playing in shallow water, food preparation, curtains blowing, and slow-motion-pan landscape shots.
The soundtrack is equally diverse, incorporating ambient music, overlaid narration about an ancient myth, overheard conversations, and unattributed comments.
Ultimately, Faya Dayi will divide viewers between those who find the ethereal imagery to be hypnotic and others who may be puzzled by the seemingly ephemeral nature of both the individual scenes and the overall structure of the film.
Presented with a gorgeous high-definition digital transfer, extras include new select-scene commentary with director Jessica Beshir and poet Ladan Osman; three short films by Beshir: “He Who Dances on Wood” (2016), “Heroin” (2017), and “Hairat” (2017), featuring an introduction by Beshir; and a leaflet with an essay by film scholar Yasmina Price.
Although challenging, Beshir’s dreamlike documentary captures a critical pivot in Ethiopia’s contemporary rural agriculture as the traditional past gives way to an unpredictable future with uncertain social implications ranging from nuclear family breakdowns to increasing waves of migration to Europe. Recommended.