Full of textures and images that evoke all of the senses, this is virtually a 5D movie, a hypnotic out-of-body experience that floats an astonishing expanse of ideas into your head — no talky explanations needed.

| Oct 28, 2023

It’s such a visually rich movie that Beshir can take viewers into a trance and separate us from the reality that this is not a work of fiction.

| Feb 15, 2023

Through the lens of khat harvesting, Beshir serves a portal into the plains of Harar where the plant is both a boon and a bane. https://www.news9live.com/entertainment/faya-dayi-film-review-188401

| Aug 29, 2022

Faya Dayi is a uniquely beautiful, award-winning documentary that given enough attention, patience and time could create a meditative transcendence like that of its subject. But its non-linear two hours is a rather too-slow, lingering watch.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 24, 2022

Gorgeously made with stories and images that will endure long after viewing.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 23, 2022

With equal parts patience and verve, Mexican-Ethiopian director Jessica Beshir traces through the mimetic haze of her film a dark web of political history.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 23, 2022

Faya Dayi is difficult to get a handle on. But that, perhaps, is the trick. Instead of trying to pin the film down and understand it logically, surrendering to its poetry and rhythms reveals something altogether more meaningful.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 21, 2022

There are some marvellous images and moods in this misty, impressionistic study.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 20, 2022

But at the end of the day, "Faya Dayi" is all about the visuals, and Beshir proves herself to have both an artist's eye and a documentarian's skill in bringing those images to life.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 16, 2022

As we watch, we can feel a push-pull, the same as that experienced by the directors fellow countrymen and women who are simultaneously moving toward an unknown future while being drawn back to the past by the memories of those left behind.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 27, 2022

Although the pacingcan sometimes be too slow,this is a melancholic, mesmerising storyof a country.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 5, 2022

"Faya dayi" is director/cinematographer [Jessica] Beshir's auspicious feature debut, offering a euphoric immersion in the harvesting, cleaning, weighing, bagging, and transporting of the khat leaves.

| Oct 13, 2021

Beshir stitches together her film's bounty of footage - much of it fascinating, some of it perplexing, all of it visually exquisite - in a manner that privileges sensation and rhythm.

| Original Score: B | Oct 11, 2021

Faya Dayi doesn't always sustain full interest across two overlong hours, but its gorgeous monochrome tableau offers an intoxicatingly dreamlike window into a community hobbled by addiction.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 10, 2021

Unlike any other documentary you're likely to see.

| Sep 17, 2021

Transcending categories, 'Faya Dayi' achieves a deeply spiritual and contemplative viewing experience.

| Sep 4, 2021

Filmed in luminous black and white, each image more beautiful than the last, Faya Dayi is not your typical documentary.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 3, 2021

Mixing and matching her approach to the material, Beshir ... creates an evocative landscape where despair and possibility intertwine.

| Sep 3, 2021

Faya Dayi wanders lovely, liminal spaces between narrative and fairytale, between documentary film and something looser, something personally vérité.

| Original Score: 7.6/10 | Sep 2, 2021

The feel is dreamlike, like a falling dusk, even when the concerns are concrete.

| Sep 2, 2021