In Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s beautiful film “This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection,” Mantoa has one thing left to live and die for. She has outlived everyone in her family and wishes to be buried in the same village.
Mantoa lives in a small town called Nasaretha in the mountainous nation of Lesotho, a country entirely surrounded by South Africa. The film constantly frames its action on the hills and valleys of the remote town, with purplish mountain peaks towering in the distance. The villagers live on subsistence farming, and some men go work in the mines in South Africa, a dangerous labor compared to sending sons to war.
After her son dies in a mine, Mantoa dons a black mourning dress and headscarf, which becomes the symbolic outfit of her mission. The government is building a dam, and the village will be flooded as a result. The residents are supposed to be relocated to the nation’s capital. For young people, it may be a chance to start a new life, but for Mantoa, it would be a painful separation not only from the village, but from the graves of all the family members she’s lost.
Village leaders and regional politicians coax the townsfolk to embrace the changes. They describe it as progress, and the story implicitly interrogates that notion and whether the villagers will benefit from their sacrifices. Their lives were not free of hardship before the announcement of the dam project. As the sole survivor of her family and an old woman, Mantoa sees things differently than the others.
Mosese is not sentimental about her story, but he has an eye for poetic flashes of poignancy and color. In a shot inside her small, thatched-roof home, Montea looks like royalty in an elaborate dress and collar, sitting against a brilliant cobalt blue wall. In a less subtle scene midway through the story, a team of workers in bright yellow outfits steadily hack away at the base of an ancient tree they are trying to tear down.
“This is Not a Burial” is a ground-breaking film. It’s the first movie filmed entirely in Lesotho and in the native Sesotho language. It’s also Lesotho’s first official submission in the Academy Awards’ Best International Film category. It premiered internationally at the Venice Biennale College, and it won a special prize at the Sundance Film Festival last year.
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The 80-year-old Mantoa is played by award-wining South African actress Mary Twala Mhlongo, who died last year. She’s excellent as the world weary but strong-willed Mantoa, who some write-off as a meddling old woman or nuisance. For her, being buried near her family has the weight of ancestry, which is more powerful to her than the words of politicians and neighbors.
Mosese’s story unfurls patiently over two hours, and not everything about the villagers’ way of life is explained for foreign viewers. The film takes nuanced views of people torn by the powerful forces at work. The politicians seem to know they are responsible for getting the villagers to buy into the project, not merely announcing what the government has decreed. The villagers, like much of Lesotho and Mantoa, are Christians, and the priest is pushed to examine his role in caring for his flock.
It’s not a film about politics, though aspects of colonialism and economics are unmistakable. Still, Mantoa fights a radical battle, defying social ostracism and offering her own vision to the younger villagers about building new lives.
“This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection” opens on April 2 at Zeitgeist Theatre & Lounge.
The lineup includes more than 20 features and short films exploring francophone culture from Vietnam to Africa
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