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The small South Africa-surrounded nation of Lesotho made its first submission ever for the best international feature Oscar this year. It’s a shame, though, that space wasn’t made for native son Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s poetic and painterly, personal and political “This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection,” a Sundance jury award winner last year, among the final five nominees.
Introduced first to a lesiba-playing storyteller figure hunkered in a dimly lit club, solemnly narrating as if into a void, we are transported to a small Lesotho Highlands village where octogenarian widow Mantoa (Mary Twala Mhlongo) is in heavy-lidded mourning over the death of her last living relative, a grown son who’s been working in South Africa’s gold mines.