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
The History of Concrete
After attending a workshop on pitching saccharine Hallmark movies, John Wilson tries to apply all the same best practices to his documentary about concrete. Frequently absurd and endlessly entertaining detours, asides, and digressions ensue.
La Bola Negra
A big, old-school historical melodrama gets a thrillingly modern, queer makeover from Spanish duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, who artfully juggle three gay protagonists across stories set in 1932, 1937, and 2017. Winner: Best Director, Cannes. Screening on 35mm.
NAZA
NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.
The Mad Dog of Europe
The story of an unmade screenplay from the writer of Citizen Kane. In 1932, Herman Mankiewicz wrote a film that foretold the persecution of the Jews and the war in Europe. But Hollywood wouldn't take the risk and The Mad Dog of Europe was never made.
The Mortal Storm
In this explicitly anti-Nazi melodrama directed by Frank Borzage (Three Comrades) a year before the US entered the war, Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart fall in love as their friends and family fall prey to the rise of Hitler's Nazi party in Germany.
Three Comrades
Scripted by F Scott Fitzgerald, Three Comrades (1938) was the first US studio film to chronicle the rise of European fascism in the 30s. Three German veterans open up a repair shop and try to regain a normal life, but political extremists have other ideas.


