mother, you have not died yet, but you will, and when you do,... - Director Advik Beni

Director Advik Beni's winsome and unconventional narrative drama "mother, you have not died yet. but you will. and when you do, you will finally be alive again" takes place in Cato Manor, Durban, where Lishana has spent over two decades caring for her elderly mother, Leela. Their lives unfold through ordinary rituals: preparing meals, tending the garden, watching television, praying before bed, feeding the cat, and reciting favorite scenes from old films. Together they inhabit a world governed by repetition, where time seems to linger rather than pass. Yet the film begins from a different understanding of reality. Leela is both alive and dead, present and absent. What begins as a personal practice gradually expands into an encounter with the histories carried by the people and places around her. Portraits converse with family archives, historical photographs, paintings, and fragments of collective memory, revealing a landscape where the violences of apartheid continue to shape the present long after its official end.

About the filmmaker - Advik Beni (director) is a South African filmmaker and curator currently based in Los Angeles. Through a practice steeped in South African traditions of orality, their work aims to create imagined spaces for marginalized people to express grief and trauma. They are interested in how these non-hierarchical, hybrid models of filmmaking can encourage a collective mutability amongst rhisomatic pathways—that may lead to an actuality of positive impact on communities; whilst preserving a cultural tradition eclipsed by Western modes of storytelling. Advik is focused on how we can witness each other’s existence, and all that entails, in an attempt to facilitate a tangibility of cross-border solidarity that prioritizes care. Their work has been supported by San Sebastián International Film Festival, Sundance, FIDMarseille, Prismatic Ground, New Orleans Film Festival, Flaherty Film Seminar, Points North Institute, and the Edinburgh International Film Festival amongst others.