Know Your Place (2024)
Director: Zia Mohajerjasbi Run Time: 118 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2022
Starring: Esther Kibreab, Haileselassie Kidane, Joseph Smith, Natnael Mebrahtu, Selamawit Gebresus
Country: United States
Language: English
About the film:
Winner of the New American Cinema Grand Jury Prize and the Golden Space Needle Award for Best Film at the 2022 Seattle International Film Festival. Winner of Best Screenplay and Audience Choice at Tacoma Film Festival 2022.
In this debut feature by writer-director Zia Mohajerjasbi, Robel Haile, an Eritrean-American boy of 15, embarks on an errand to deliver a huge and heavy suitcase across town destined for a sick family member in his parents’ homeland. He enlists the help of his best friend Fahmi Tadesse, when an unexpected turn transmutes his simple task into an odyssey across the rapidly gentrifying city of Seattle; navigating directions to make his delivery on time, along with the challenges of familial responsibility, self identification, and dislocation amid the ongoing redevelopment and economic displacement of the only community he’s ever known as home.
About the filmmaker:
Zia Mohajerjasbi is an Iranian-American filmmaker hailing from Seattle, a city that has served as the primary focus of his work. He has shot and directed critically-acclaimed music videos for Macklemore, Blue Scholars, Jake One and Common Market, as well as a 2007 mockumentary short with standup comedian Hari Kondabolu, Manoj. In 2009, Mohajerjasbi became the youngest winner ever of the “Genius Award,” presented by The Stranger, a Seattle weekly. In 2015, he wrote and directed the award-winning narrative short film, Hagereseb, and is also the cinematographer and director of an ongoing storytelling series, The Charcoal Sky.
In April 2022, Mohajerjasbi’s debut feature film Know Your Place which he wrote and directed, premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival where it was awarded the New American Cinema Grand Jury Prize and the Golden Space Needle Award for Best Film.