"The fact that 'Faya Dayi' wasn't nominated for Best International Feature and Best Documentary is shocking. The importance of the Academy Awards has lessened for me knowing that something that actually transcends the form of a motion picture isn't flashy enough to be recognized. Beshir should be given a blank check for her next project and will have a career of legend, Oscar nod or not."
So says a "shocked, shocked, I say" fan of Faya Dayi.
All I have to say is: The End.
And.
Faya Dayi is shortlisted in the 94th Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the Documentary Feature category, where the winner will be revealed in the March 2022 Oscars. Oscar nomination (or win) in an obscure category as Documentary Film will hardly raise the profile of Faya Dayi, which has essentially become a “film festival circuit” film, watched by loyal, almost cultish, followers. The audiences that watches it, and gives it the accolades I described above, will hardly put a dent in the financial gains, and general recognition, of the film, nor of Beshir.
Is Beshir really schilling for Ethiopia, or is she simply an anomaly, a Mexican-American-Oromo? Fringe film agencies and out-of-view cinema theaters can no longer hide behind their lazy ignorance, nor their blind support of a film with a clear political agenda. And serious artists, who have spent years studying contemporary film, will analyze it without the status quo breathing down their backs. I am such a critic.
And that is exactly where Faya Dayi will remain: amidst fringe leftist film festivals, who have a gripe against the whole world, and would love nothing better than a global realignment of people and places, to fit their "woke" agendas. And cheerleaders, who grabbed on to the "Ethiopia" label, and will have to reassess Beshir's loyalties.
Beshir failed, even in the preliminary steps of "presenting authentic images and stories." She can stay in her smart Brooklyn apartment and cook up her next antagonisms, which will remain obscure and separate from the ordinary world. The question is, for how long will the Oromo fringe separatists, and the destitute Ethiopian Oromo youth, put up with her and her "lifestyle" (if she can even maintain that)?
With targets coming at him from all directions, the assiduous PM Abiy Ahmed Ali battles on, determined to build Ethiopia, giving his father's Oromo people some leeway, as he is forever linked to his mother's and wife's Amhara/Ethiopia heritage.
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My posts on Beshir: here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
My published article, here: A Critique of Jessica Beshir's Documentary Film Faya Dayi
Published in: Addis Insight, ZeHabesh, Borkena, Ethiopia 360