Focus on Lemohang Mosese

Lemohang Mosese is a filmmaker from Lesotho, currently based in Berlin. His works have been shown at film festivals and museums in many parts of the world. His films deal with themes like home, loss and survival, and are sensual experiences as well as intellectually challenging. For Lemohang Mosese, filmmaking is a form of conversation. Therefore, it seems appropriate to introduce the artist of this year’s Focus in the form of a conversation as well.

MOTHER, I AM SUFFOCATING. THIS IS MY LAST FILM ABOUT YOU and THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT’S A RESURRECTION made you an established and well-regarded filmmaker in the international festival scene. How did these two films come about? While they share similar themes, they also seem almost like polar opposites that make one another whole. And your latest film ANCESTRAL VISIONS OF THE FUTURE seems like a mixture of the two.

Lemohang Mosese: THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT’S A RESURRECTION is, in many ways, a film about staying. It is about a deep, almost spiritual refusal to leave the land – to remain rooted in the soil of one’s ancestors. MOTHER, I AM SUFFOCATING. THIS IS MY LAST FILM ABOUT YOU, on the other hand, is about leaving. It is about exile, about distance, about the suffocation that can come from being away from home and yet still being haunted by it. When I think about it now, these two films stand on opposite sides of the same question: one stays, the other leaves.

And then ANCESTRAL VISIONS OF THE FUTURE lands somewhere in between them. It lives in the grey zone. It is neither fully about staying nor fully about leaving. It is about existing between worlds – half sun, half darkness. In the film, the narrator invites the viewer into a house, a house of madness. But this madness is also a way of seeing the world differently. It allows us to inhabit a strange space where exile can begin to resemble home, and where memory, time and identity become fluid.

What is fascinating to me is that this structure was never intentional. Only now do I see that the three films form a subtle movement: leaving, staying, and then inhabiting the in-between.

ANCESTRAL VISIONS OF THE FUTURE feels like a continuation of earlier conversations, but also more personal. It is a film about memory and inheritance. In my culture, time is not something that moves in a straight line. The past is alive. Our ancestors are not behind us – they are beside us. So, the film tries to create a sense of time that breathes. Time that is layered, circular, sometimes even collapsing into itself. The film lives in-between spaces where many of us truly live. The two prior films ask a closely linked question: what it means to be born from a land that never stops calling you.

You create mesmerising cinematic experiences for all senses that aren’t ‘only’ philosophical, but very entertaining in a special way – it is quite striking that you’re often described as a “self-taught filmmaker”. How did you learn this craft, this art? You once cited Djibril Diop Mambéty as a great influence, and his notion of “to see with your ears and hear with your eyes” aligns perfectly with this year’s IFFI theme.

L. M.: Yes, I am often called a self-taught filmmaker, but I never really felt alone in learning cinema. Cinema itself was my teacher. I learned by watching films obsessively, by experimenting, by failing many times. And by listening – to film, to silence. Djibril Diop Mambéty’s “to see with your ears and hear with your eyes” resonates deeply with me. Cinema is not only about images. It is about rhythm, breath and sensation. When I make films, I try to create an experience where the audience feels the film before they fully understand it.

The key protagonist in your recent films seems to be ‘the mother’; not only as a person, but as a country, Lesotho. In the so-called world of film, your name has become sort of intertwined with ‘your’ country Lesotho, and there is a tendency of Western art discourse to put artists in the role of a representative, a messenger. Has that bothered you, and how do your films resonate with people in Lesotho itself?

L. M.: It is true that my name has become closely associated with Lesotho. Sometimes the international art world likes to see filmmakers as ambassadors of a place, as if we are translators of a mysterious land. I understand why this happens, but I don’t think of my work in that way. I am not trying to explain Lesotho to the world. I am trying to understand my relationship with it. For me, filmmaking is a form of conversation – with my country, with my ancestors and with myself. Yes, the mother in my films is not only a person. She is the land, the memory, the origin. I believe that the films also speak to people back home. Even if the films travel far, their spirit always returns to the mountains where they began.

Do you notice different patterns of reactions to your films in different parts of the world? And has it become harder over the years to avoid thinking about who will be the audience of your films?

L. M.: Different audiences respond in different ways, but what is surprising to me is how often the emotional core of the films travels across cultures. People in Europe might see the films through ideas of exile or philosophy. Audiences in Africa may recognise the textures of memory and oral storytelling more immediately. But ultimately, the themes are human – loss, belonging, faith, survival. As for thinking about audiences while making films, I try not to. If I start thinking too much about how a film will be received, it becomes impossible to remain honest. The film must first be truthful to itself.

Speaking about belonging and faith: What do you think about the possible analogy of cinema and religion? In your work, especially, dealing with religion is a very important aspect – and your films evoke feelings and questions of community.

L. M.: I think cinema and religion share something very profound. Both gather people in a dark space where they look toward light. In that space, something happens that is larger than the individual. A collective experience. A moment where strangers breathe together and feel something together. In many ways cinema can be a ritual. My films are not trying to preach faith, but they are deeply interested in belief – in the human need to believe in something beyond the visible world. Cinema can remind us that we are not alone. That our stories echo across generations. That listening to one another is a sacred act.