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With perhaps the longest movie title that I've encountered, South African filmmaker Advik Beni's impressionistic film examines the post-apartheid Indian township of Cato Manor, near Durban, South Africa, still simmering with ethnic tension. It is told through Lishana, an Indian descendent who is caring for her aging, dying mother and her family history.
Lishana describes her grief after the hindi funeral ceremony, as she feels the void of her mother's presence in her everyday life - everything and nothing has changed at the same time. As memories of her mother, Leela, doing mundane things with her - cooking, tending to the garden, having conversations and eating together, persist, it's like the line between the past and the present is blurring.
Everyone deals with grief differently- Lishana delves into her art practice: portrait photography. With her relative's barbershop in town, she takes pictures of her neighbors and citizens of Durban - young, old, black, indian. And her photographs are physical links to the sordid history of colonialism, immigration, and apartheid.
Lishana's family history is an interesting one - Her grandmother was one of thousands of Indians brought in to South Africa to work in the sugarcane plantations, an indentured labor force by the Colonial British Empire. Lishana, who never had been to the homeland of her ancestors, nevertheless kept her Indian traditions and hindu culture within the working class neighborhood of Cato Manor. Her imagined India created a lore in her mind, much grander than the reality.
There has always been violence in KwaZulu-Natal province and the city of Durban both under apartheid and post-apartheid period. The 1949 Durban riot was against Indian settlement, then the unrest in 2021 amid economic hardship during COVID-19 and the imprisonment of former president, Jacob Zuma. Accompanied by archival footage, Lishana recounts the region's checkered history and ongoing tension and violence.
Shot on grainy film stock and shaky handheld camera, Mother... has the looks and feels of old ethnography documentaries of the bygone era. Beni also incorporates a multitude of art/film techniques that include stop motion, drawings, immersive sound design and reenactments. The filmmaker portrays a picture of an immigrant enclave using impressionistic film language, often focusing on life's little details - the color, sounds, ephemeral qualities of everyday life.
Merging past and present, personal and historical, the film has a quality of a lucid dream, where memories and imaginations merge and create new reality personalized for its subject. Mother, You Have Not Died Yet. But You Will. And When You Do, You Will Finally be Alive Again, is a beautiful audio visual experience. Mother, You Have Not Died Yet. But You Will. And When You Do, You Will Finally be Alive Again, enjoyed its world premiere at FID Marseille 2026 where it won the Audience Award. Visit the film's page at the official festival site for more information.
