Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
Director
Jessica Beshir
Cast
Mohammed Arif,
Hashim Abdi,
Biniam Yonas,
Urji Abrahim Mumade,
Destu Ibrahim Mumade
Genre
Documentary
A spiritual journey into the highlands of Harar, Ethiopia, immersed in the rituals of khat, a leaf Sufi Muslims chewed for centuries for religious meditations—and Ethiopia’s most lucrative cash crop today. A tapestry of intimate stories offers a window into the dreams of youth under a repressive regime.
Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele
In 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.
The New York Times by Nicolas Rapold
Unifying 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.
Screen Daily by Allan Hunter
Jessica Beshir’s hypnotic, immersive and very beautiful documentary marks an impressive feature debut.
RogerEbert.com by Sheila O'Malley
The film weaves a spell with its rhythms, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, all accompanied by a vivid and haunting sound design.
Film Threat by Josiah Teal
Leaving 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.
The Film Stage by Jordan Raup
Journalistic in the sense that it feels like Beshir has compiled stray quotes, fleeting snapshots, and loosely connected thoughts from a journal into a dreamy cinematic form, Faya Dayi becomes more breathtaking as these images and ideas coalesce.
Variety by Guy Lodge
Faya Dayi is predominantly a mood piece that seeks to evoke the leaf’s own perception-altering properties.
Paste Magazine by Dom Sinacola
Like 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.
IndieWire by Tambay Obenson
Faya 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.
Slant Magazine by Jake Cole
The documentary’s aesthetics strikingly channel the euphoric feelings induced by Ethopia’s top cash crop.
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