Sundance prizewinning director Lemohang Mosese’s documentary feature “Ancestral Visions of the Future” has been boarded by Memento International ahead of its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.
“Ancestral Visions of the Future” marks Mosese’s follow up to “This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection” which won premiered at Venice in 2019 and went on to win the special jury award for visionary filmmaking at Sundance in 2020. The documentary reteams Mosese with Memento which had sold “This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection” to more than 20 countries and presented it at more than 80 festivals despite the pandemic. It won more than 30 awards around the world and is part of the Criterion Collection.
In “Ancestral Visions of the Future,” Mosese, a Berlin-based filmmaker and visual artist, blurs the lines between reality and reconstruction and explores his own childhood in Lesotho, a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Mosese confronts the moments that shattered and shaped him. “From the dusty gravel roads where his seven-year-old-self played with wire cars, to the dispassionate streets of exile where he dissolved into a faceless existence, these memories intertwine with the presence of Mosese’s mother, a figure of vigilance and defiance,” reads the synopsis provided by Memento International.
“This film is, at its core, a biographical work,” said Mosese, whose previous credits also include “Mother, I am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You,” a visual essay that premiered at Berlinale Forum in 2019. “But it is not a story of exile in the conventional sense – it is a meditation on the longing that sustains it, on beauty, violence, displacement, memory, and the fragile architecture of losing oneself.”
“Ancestral Visions of the Future” stars Siphiwe Nzima, Sobo Bernard, Zaman Mathejane, Mochesane Kotsoane and Rehauhetsoe Kotsoane.
The documentary feature was produced by Marie Balducchi at well established French production house Agat Films, and Mosese’s Lesotho-based company Mokoari Street Media. Co-producers include Laura Kloeckner at Seera Films and Anan Fries, creative producer at Mokoari. The film was made with the support of Arte La Lucarne, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, the World Cinema Fund, the Doha Film Institute and Red Sea Film Festival Foundation.
“Ancestral Visions of the Future” joins Memento International’s 20 year-anniversary slate which boasts Berlinale Panorama titles “Dreams in Nightmares” and buzzy Sundance midnight title “The Ugly Stepsiter.” Other films on the sales company’s roster include the Sundance title “Atropia” by Hailey Gates; Camille Perton’s “Arenas” starring Edgar Ramirez; opera director Damiano Michieletto’s debut “Primavera;” Haifaa Al-Mansour’s crime thriller “Unidentified,” as well as Laurent Micheli’s social thriller “Nino in Paradise.”
