‘Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You. - Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’

The people on the dusty streets of Lesotho stare inquisitively at the young woman, who, like Jesus, carries a wooden cross on her back. She looks back into their faces, at mystically beautiful landscapes, a herd of sheep, and a pair of hands that knit unceasingly. A raw voice-over – aware that it is not being heard by those being addressed – structures the flow of images into a cinematic lament. In this essay film, Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese succeeds in creating the chronicle of a radicalising sorrow, which steadily increases in scope from a personal farewell to a mother to a politically aware defection from the motherland. In intense, aching fashion, this unusual lament on an African story of migration sheds light on an realm of experience that is taboo and not only in cinema.

Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese is a filmmaker from Lesotho. Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film about You is his first film, inspired by the emotions and thoughts that emerged from his time in Berlin, far from his homeland.