North American Premiere
Following his internationally acclaimed This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019), filmmaker and visual artist Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese returns with Ancestral Visions of the Future — a deeply personal cinematic essay that weaves myth, memory, and autobiography into a poetic meditation on loss and longing. Fragmented and dreamlike, the film introduces two mythical figures: the Puppeteer, who cultivates herbs to extend life; and the Market Seller, a mother who preserves the language of dreams in a city that has forgotten how to speak it.
Alongside these poetic threads, Mosese retraces his own path from his childhood in Lesotho to the isolating streets of Berlin, with his mother’s presence anchoring the film as both guardian and witness. Ancestral Visions of the Future resists linear storytelling in favour of sensory intuition, ancestral echoes, and emotional excavation. What emerges is less of a narrative than a reckoning — an offering of remembrance, resistance, and cinematic defiance.
Presented by
Community Partner
Siphiwe Nzima, Sobo Bernard, Mochesane Kotsoane, Rehauhetsoe Kotsoane
France/Lesotho/Germany/
Qatar/Saudi Arabia
2025
English
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Marie Balducchi
Producer
Marie Balducchi, Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese
Screenwriter
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese
Cinematography
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, Phillip Leteka
Editor
Andrès Hilarion Madariaga
Original Music
Diego Noguera
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese
Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese is a self-taught filmmaker and visual artist from Lesotho and based in Berlin. His film Mother, I am Suffocating. This is My Last Film About You was selected for Final Cut in Venice in 2018, where it won six awards, and he was one of three filmmakers selected for Biennale College Cinema for his feature film This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection, which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in 2019. Mosese is an alumnus of the Berlinale Talents (2011), Focus Features Africa First (2012), Realness African Screenwriting Residency (2017), and Cinefondation’s L’Atelier (2019).
Filmography: Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You (2019); This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Romería
An orphan from a young age, 18-year-old Marina intends to pursue a university scholarship. The application, however, requires the signatures of her paternal grandparents, compelling her to embark on a pilgrimage and seek out the family she has never met.
Democracy Under Siege
As the USA turns 250, Oscar-nominated director Laura Nix considers the roots of the current political crisis with commentary from historian Heather Cox Richardson, progressive politician Jamie Raskin, and cartoonist Ann Telnaes, among others.
Peter Asher: Everywhere Man
A chart topping pop star as one half of Peter and Gordon, Peter Asher was brother to Jane, brother in law to Paul McCartney, ran the Beatles' Apple, produced and managed James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, and 10,000 Maniacs, to name just a few. He did it all.
Another World
This hit anime from Hong Kong gives us an unpredictable, sometimes darkly karmic tale taking place on either side of the afterlife involving a headstrong princess with bad karma and the spirit guide who tries to help her get on a better path.
Unforgiven
Bill Munny (Clint Eastwood) is face down in pig shit when we first see him. He's a bad farmer, but has a natural facility for killing people – a vocation to which he returns in a quest that combines both profit and justice. Or so he chooses to believe.