In her hypnotic documentary feature, Ethiopian Mexican filmmaker Jessica Beshir explores the coexistence of everyday life and its mythical undercurrents. Beshir was forced to leave her hometown of Harar as a teenager due to growing political strife. The film she returned to make about the city, its rural Oromo farming community, and the harvesting of the country's most sought-after export (the euphoria-inducing khat plant) is neither a straightforward work of nostalgia nor an issue-oriented doc about a particular drug culture. Rather, Beshir has constructed something dreamlike: a film that uses light, texture and sound to illuminate the spiritual lives of people whose experiences often become fodder for ripped-from-the-headlines tales of migration. D: Jessica Beshir Ethiopia, subtitled, 2021