Matabeleland

In 1983, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe presided over the massacre of more than 20,000 people in Matabeleland, leaving the victims’ bodies lying in unmarked graves scattered across the countryside. Nearly four decades later, Chris Nyathi, whose father was one of those victims, continues to believe that he and his family are cursed by the fact that his father’s spirit remains restless without a proper burial. Chris has a sprawling family of 17 children to support, and the company he works for has not paid him in months. He is stretched thin and is physically and emotionally absent from his children’s lives. His sparkle-eyed girlfriend, Dumi, loves him deeply but begins to wonder if Chris’ obsession with the curse will overshadow any future they might have together. In this delicately observed feature-length debut, director Nyasha Kadandara tells a powerful story of one man’s search for healing in a country still reckoning with the weight of its past.