A spiritual journey into the highlands of Harar, immersed in the rituals of khat, a leaf Sufi Muslims chewed for centuries for religious meditations - and Ethiopia's most lucrative cash crop today.... (Full plot summary below)
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A spiritual journey into the highlands of Harar, immersed in the rituals of khat, a leaf Sufi Muslims chewed for centuries for religious meditations - and Ethiopia's most lucrative cash crop today.
Leave your thoughts about Faya Dayi.
| Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleIn eschewing directness of intent for the artful massaging of space, sound and rhythm, Beshir’s film — a very personal project for the Mexican Ethiopian director, which she shot over 10 years — stakes a richer claim to our sense of the place and the effect of its most lucrative crop. |
| RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyThe film weaves a spell with its rhythms, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, all accompanied by a vivid and haunting sound design. |
| The New York TimesNicolas RapoldUnifying this elliptical canvas is the sense of a contemplative search, which can also mean an escape from an altered homeland, perhaps to dull what feels lost. |
| Film ThreatJosiah TealLeaving a traditional narrative structure in the dust, Beshir uses breathtaking cinematography to bring you into the Horn of Africa. The movie is moving poetry about the struggles in khat fields and Ethiopia itself. |
| Screen DailyAllan HunterJessica Beshir’s hypnotic, immersive and very beautiful documentary marks an impressive feature debut. |
| CineVueChristopher MachellIf not in the right frame of mind, Faya Dayi is difficult to get a handle on. But that, perhaps, is the trick. Instead of trying to pin the film down and understand it logically, surrendering to its poetry and rhythms reveals something altogether more meaningful. |
| Little White LiesCheyenne BunsieThere is an entirely straightforward way of making a docudrama about this subject, yet Beshir’s bold approach leaves much more of a lasting memory. |
| Paste MagazineDom SinacolaLike RaMell Ross’s Hale County This Morning, This Evening, Faya Dayi wanders lovely, liminal spaces between narrative and fairytale, between documentary film and something looser, something personally vérité. |
| Slant MagazineJake ColeThe documentary’s aesthetics strikingly channel the euphoric feelings induced by Ethopia’s top cash crop. |
| IndieWireTambay ObensonFaya Dayi is a film that invites the mind and soul with its visual grandeur, and keeps the viewer engaged with a tension and mystery that seems to be lurking beneath its surface. It’s familiar yet foreign — a world one must at once surrender to, yet be careful to not completely lose oneself in. |
