Indian South African filmmaker Advik Beni’s enchanting and mysterious movie “mother, you have not died yet. but you will. And when you do, you will finally be alive again.” had its North American premiere this weekend at the Camden International Film Festival in Maine. I don’t have any information about distribution in the U.S. but I recommend seeing it when you can.

In post-apartheid Durban, South Africa, Lishana Nandhlal is a caregiver for her elderly mother Leela. Lishana has been taking care of her mother for over two decades. Their days are filled with tender rituals, preparing meals, watching television, playing with their pets, chopping wood, praying, and working in their garden. Archival photos scattered with flower petals accompany Lishana’s memory of planting marigolds with her mother. Vintage Bollywood movies play as she tells the story of her “nani” being forced to migrate from India to South Africa and become an indentured servant. When one black South African man refuses to smile for his photo and then says he doesn’t want a print, she is reminded of how the country’s colonialism left resentment between black and white South Africans and Indian South Africans. In 1949 there were riots in Durban in which black South Africans attacked Indian South Africans in what became the second deadliest massacre during apartheid. (There were also riots in Durban in 2021.)

Lishana opens up a small portrait studio in the corner of her uncle’s barbershop and begins taking simple portraits of anyone who wants one.  (This reminded me of the American photographer Mike Disfarmer, who shot thousands of realistic portraits of ordinary Arkansas people in the 1920s to 1950s, a wealth of documentation that only became known of after his death.)

The titles are in cursive writing against a brownish screen and the film stock is grainy, slightly blurred with mostly earth tones and a bit shaky; it looks a bit like enlarged, somewhat faded Super 8mm film. This creates a sense of nostalgic memories, even though most of the footage was shot newly for the film. This is an assemblage movie that includes mesmerizing collages of ephemeral colors and sounds, fabrics and natural objects.

The work makes me think of Chris Marker’s conjuring of memory, politics and desire in such films as “Sans Soleil” (minus the humor). In the director’s statement in the film’s press kit, Avi says “[I] was born in 1998, I’m part of a generation referred to as born-frees—born after apartheid. Presently, we are in a time where born-frees are being tasked with repairing a broken country.” Let’s hope Avi and other “born-frees” succeed in this grand mission.