Faya Dayi Review: A Dreamy Portrait of People Self-Medicating Their Despair

As it traces the harvesting, sale, and use of khat, a flowering plant with stimulant properties, Jessica Beshir’s Faya Dayi takes the viewer on a journey through the walled city of Harar in eastern Ethiopian and around its rural outskirts. Khat is primarily used by Sufi Muslims for religious purposes, but its side effects, such as euphoria, have broadened its appeal beyond traditional rites, turning the plant into Ethiopia’s cash crop.

Throughout, the documentary’s aesthetics channel the euphoric feelings induced by khat: Beshir’s high-contrast black-and-white cinematography oscillates between soft and hyper-sharp focus, while her use of slow motion and the film’s languid editing pace turn even the most mundane action into an ethereal, stretched-out moment in time. The opening sequence—a long shot of a silhouetted figure running toward the camera along a riverbank as the nighttime sounds of insects and other animals fill the soundtrack, then a close-up of smoke rising from a blazing brazier—set the poetic tone of Faya Dayi in a matter of seconds.

Beshir’s subjects are all inextricably bound to khat, from the laborers who harvest the plant during long, grueling workdays, to the individuals who’ve been driven to near catatonia by their addiction to it. Conversations are often presented in voiceover, so that it’s impossible to tell who’s speaking and in what context; everyone, though, would seem to be prone to philosophical and spiritual ramblings, which are disconnected from what’s shown on screen. One person asks whether we can see the inside of a man, while another tells a folktale about an amir confronting the specter of death. Frequently, shots obscure a clear view of the subjects, instead offering close-ups on their hands as they toil or dress or prepare khat.

In lieu of a simple explanation of the processes around the growth and distribution of khat, the film communicates the escapism it provides to a desperate populace. Snaking tracking shots through Harar use the ancient walls of the city as a metaphor for people’s sense of entrapment, their feelings of having no future. Much of the talk heard throughout the film concerns the subjects’ hopes and anxieties over emigration, with many dreaming of a life in another country before weighing those fantasies against the likely reality that they would end up stuck doing labor just as backbreaking in, say, Egypt but without the benefit of being able to be around family and friends. An undercurrent of rage and despair ripples through these discussions, with one man arguing, “We shouldn’t have to perish in the deserts and the seas to change our lives.” After a while, such talk begins to change the film’s drifting vibe, reflecting how the laidback high induced by khat is but a distraction from so much hopelessness.

Gradually, a protagonist emerges in the form of the teenaged Mohammed, whose father is a khat addict who dreams of escaping to another country. Mohammed’s shared interest in a better life prompts many a discussion about emigration and provides the film with a narrative backbone. He questions other workers who have left Ethiopia before for advice, though most dissuade him as every path out of the country requires long treks through desert terrain, with no resources available along the way. “Memories,” one man tells him, “that’s all you’ll be able to carry.” Other subplots spin out from this central storyline, like the account of a young couple separated by the economic pressures of job hunting, and that of a teenager forced to take over for his injured father in the khat fields in order to support his family.

The deeper that Faya Dayi delves into the heart of a particular slice of contemporary Ethiopian experience, the more refined its aesthetics become. Beshir’s use of slow motion is especially pronounced in the second half as other, non-narcotic forms of escapism are explored, such the local swimming hole that people dive into on scorching days. No less a tradition than the use of khat, these actions deepen the film’s portrait of the things that bind people to their homeland. And as suffocated as many of the profiled people can feel in Ethiopia, the ways in which they cope are subtly set against depictions of the steady encroachment of globalism, as in the juxtapositions between people wearing traditional garb and the khat harvesters wearing mass-produced FIFA shirts. The workers themselves often seem mechanical, stripping leaves from stalks at impossible speeds to meet their daily quotas. In effect, as much as Faya Dayi captures a prevalent mood of resentment toward one’s place of origin, it also displays a struggle to maintain and assert identity in the face of external, unseen forces, and neither the subjects nor the film can say for sure which side of that debate should win out.