Know Your Place (2022 | USA | 118 min | Zia Mohajerjasbi)
Seattle rarely looks as good on film as when Zia Mohajerjasbi’s behind the camera and directing. Having made his name in the local filmmaking scene over a decade ago with breakout videos for Blue Scholars and Macklemore, picked up a Stranger Genius Award, and built a resume with short films, he’s returned to familiar geographies to make his feature film debut. And it is, unsurprisingly, a visual treat and a love letter to the city. In collaboration with cinematographer Nicholas Wiesnet, he brings the rich textures of the city to the screen in a poetic narrative about the wayward path of an oversized suitcase on its way from the Central District to East Africa.
Our guides on this unintentional odyssey are two fifteen-year-olds: Robel Haile (Joseph Smith, Eritrean-American) and his best friend Fahmi Tadesse (Nathanael Moges, Ethiopian-American) residents of Seattle’s Central District. Having received a call from an in-law in Eritrea who’s desperate for money and medical supplies needed to help a sick child, Robel’s recently-widowed mother — already struggling to hold her family together — has dutifully assembled a care package. However, she herself is too consumed with the responsibilities of her own work to transport the luggage into the hands of the group of family friends who have promised to bring it to Africa on their next trip. So into the hands of her quiet and reserved son it goes. Each stumble of its path adding layers of complexity and opportunities to share insights into the sprawling community.
Whether drone shots of fog blanketed residential communities, human-scaled views of kids navigating downtown streets, or a drizzly twilight evening, the city — be it the parts that are rapidly growing or quietly disappearing — is depicted with reverent familiarity. It’s an intimate view that is as clear-eyed about the danger that the boys face from aggressive cops or nosy neighbors worried about dark skinned kids who they deem out of place as it is celebratory of the rich and caring network that sustains them. The pace of the film is occasionally languid and the plot meanders for the sake of being more inclusive, but if you settle into it, you’ll be glad to spend time with a community where friends know the right moment to wrestle you into a hug, a far-flung uncle will give you a free taxi ride so long as it’s on his way, and a family friend will scold you for being so late while simultaneously insist that you sit down to eat something already.
Know Your Place had its world premiere during the 48th Seattle International Film Festival where it won the audience’s Golden Space Needle Award. It is seeking distribution.
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