'POV' Presents Award-Winning Faya Dayi, Intimate Look At How Geo-Political, Economic and Climate Forces are Shaping a Generation of Ethiopians
Overview
New York, NY –July 19, 2022 – POV, America’s longest running documentary series, currently celebrating its 35th anniversary season, will present Faya Dayi in its national broadcast premiere on Monday, August 29, 2022 (check local listings). The film, directed, produced and filmed by Jessica Beshir, is a hypnotic immersion in the world of Harar, Ethiopia, a place where one commodity – khat, a euphoria-inducing plant – holds sway over the rituals and rhythms of everyday life. After its broadcast premiere date, Faya Dayi will be available to stream free until September 29, 2022 at pbs.org, and the PBS Video app. In addition to standard closed captioning for the film, POV, in partnership with audio description service DiCapta, provides real time audio interpretations for audiences with sensory disabilities.
Faya Dayi, which was named to the 94th Academy Awards® shortlist for documentary feature, captures intimate moments in the lives of everyone from the harvesters of the crop to people lost in its narcotic haze, to a desperate but determined younger generation searching for an escape from political strife. Other accolades include Film Independent Spirit Awards win for Truer Than Fiction; Gotham Independent Film Awards nomination for Best Documentary; five Cinema Eye Honors Awards nominations for Outstanding Achievement in Direction, Debut Feature Film, Non Fiction Feature Filmmaking, Cinematography and Sound Design; and two Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards nominations for Best First Documentary Feature and Best Cinematography. Executive producers are Tony Hsieh, Roberto Grande, Mimi Pham, Bryn Mooser, and Kathryn Everett for XTR; Rhianon Jones for Neon Heart Productions; Matthew Petock, Daniel Patrick Carbone, and Zachary Shedd for Flies Collective; and Erika Dilday and Chris White for American Documentary | POV.
A film ten years in the making, Faya Dayi was conceived by Beshir as an act of reconnecting with the Ethiopian homeland she left at the age of sixteen, when her family fled to Mexico to escape the chaos and oppression of the Mengistu and Derg political regimes. In 2011, during one of her return trips to Ethiopia, Beshir began collecting observations and impressions of the country by shooting footage that told the stories of several Ethiopians and the social, religious, and economic forces influencing their lives, including the ascendency of khat as a national cash crop. A plant with hallucinatory properties that has been traditionally harvested and chewed for ritualistic purposes, khat was, in Beshir’s youth, one of many lucrative crops bolstering the Ethiopian economy.
But in the intervening years, climate change and politics have forced farmers to grow khat to the near exclusion of all other plants. And its excessive presence in the country has increased recreational khat usage among the younger generations who use it to soften the edges of cumulative years spent experiencing war, unemployment, and a lack of freedom of expression.
In Faya Dayi, the Mexican-Ethiopian filmmaker offers an exciting revitalization to the ‘Third Cinema,’ the influential aesthetic and political cinematic movement that emerged in the late sixties and early seventies that decried neocolonialism and capitalism. The transcontinental movement created powerful creative connections between Latin America and Africa through the work of celebrated directors such as Fernando Solanas, Jorge Sanjinés, and Ousmane Sembène, which have influenced Beshir’s own artistic practice.
"I am interested in transmitting experiences that reflect the complex struggles people in my hometown are presently encountering. Through an inner gaze that above all honors the dignity of people, the film opens a space for us to consider the effects of political violence on our youth whom we continue to lose to dangerous migrations. I'm incredibly appreciative of the way in which POV champions voices that have been historically underrepresented, and I couldn't be happier to have Faya Dayi's television premiere on POV,” said Faya Dayi director/producer Jessica Beshir.
POV executive producer and executive director of American Documentary, Erika Dilday said, “Watching this multi-layered film is both a visceral and intellectual experience. Jessica’s work is a triumph in documentary filmmaking that we are beyond thrilled to include in our 35th anniversary season.”
Faya Dayi won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2021 Visions du Réel, the Reva and David Logan Grand Jury Award at the 2021 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, and was Shortlisted as a Feature Documentary for the 94th Academy Awards®.
[Download photos]
Faya Dayi is directed and produced by Jessica Beshir. The executive producers are Tony Hsieh, Roberto Grande, Mimi Pham, Bryn Mooser and Kathryn Everett for XTR; Rhianon Jones for Neon Heart Productions; Matthew Petock, Daniel Patrick Carbone and Zachary Shedd for Flies Collective and Erika Dilday and Chris White for American Documentary | POV. The film is supported by the Sundance Institute, Jerome Grant and the Doha Film Institute. Faya Dayi is a co-presentation with Black Public Media (BPM).
Credits
Director/Producer/Cinematographer: Jessica Beshir
Executive Producers: Tony Hsieh, Roberto Grande, Mimi Pham, Bryn Mooser, and Kathryn Everett for XTR; Rhianon Jones for Neon Heart Productions; Matthew Petock, Daniel Patrick Carbone, and Zachary Shedd for Flies Collective; Erika Dilday and Chris White for American Documentary | POV
Editors: Jeanne Applegate, Dustin Waldman
Sound Designer: Tom Efinger
Photos
Download Faya Dayi photos here.
About The Filmmaker
Jessica Beshir, Director/ Producer/Cinematographer
Jessica Beshir is a Mexican-Ethiopian director, producer and cinematographer based in Brooklyn. She made her directorial debut with her short film Hairat, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Her short films including He Who Dances on Wood and Heroin have played at Festivals and museums around the world including the Rotterdam Film Festival, Hot Docs, IDFA, Tribeca Film Festival and the Eye Film Museum Amsterdam among others. Beshir has been honored with grant support from the Sundance Film Institute, the Doha Film Institute and the Jerome Foundation, and most recently won a 2022 Emerging Filmmaker Grant from the Independent Spirit Awards. Faya Dayi is her feature film debut.
About
About POV
Produced by American Documentary, POV is the longest-running independent documentary showcase on American television. Since 1988, POV has presented films on PBS that capture the full spectrum of the human experience, with a long commitment to centering women and people of color in front of, and behind, the camera. The series is known for introducing generations of viewers to groundbreaking works like Tongues Untied, American Promise and Minding The Gap and innovative filmmakers including Jonathan Demme, Laura Poitras and Nanfu Wang. In 2018, POV Shorts launched as one of the first PBS series dedicated to bold and timely short-form documentaries. All POV programs are available for streaming concurrent with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms, including PBS.org and the PBS Video app, available on iOS, Android, Roku streaming devices, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO. For more information about PBS Passport, visit the PBS Passport FAQ website.
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