31/01/2024 - Damien Hauser, just 21 years young, presents his third feature to date, a vibrant coming-of-age tale on leaving and returning home

Bosco Baraka Karisa and Eletricer Kache Hamisi in After the Long Rains

IFFR famously has a sidebar competition called Bright Future; After the Long Rains [+see also:
interview: Damien Hauser
film profile] by Damien Hauser enjoys its European premiere in the festival’s Harbour section, yet having a “bright future” is virtually this guy’s modus operandi. A decade ago, there was undue obsession with Quebecois wunderkind Xavier Dolan’s fresh age; three movies down at 21, Hauser has him beat with none of the irritating publicity, and at least as much talent and promise.

The difference between his Tallinn-premiering Blind Love [+see also:
film review
film profile] (the previous Hauser film this writer had seen) and After the Long Rains is similar to the gulf between 19 and 21 – the age he is now. Previously, you’re just getting the hang of doing your own washing and making a juvenile but fun Kenyan sex comedy, whereas now, Hauser is capable of infusing some grandeur and further craftsmanship into his cinema, this time brushing up and holding its own against the preoccupations of contemporary African and black diasporic film.

The African cinema of this generation seems notably more forward-looking; where previous masters like Sembène were contemplating post-colonial inheritance and the endurance of traditions dating from long before that, After the Long Rains – like Mati Diop’s Atlantics [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mati Diop
film profile], with which it shares a great deal – has a more globalised consciousness, yearning for what lies beyond the confines of the continent and fed with far more eclectic, and sometimes jarring, visual influences. It’s a focused coming-of-age drama following Aisha (played by Electricer Kache Hamisi as a child), whose ambitions and dreams are valleys beyond her tiny Kenyan village of Watamu, no matter how that locale otherwise defines everything about her. The patriarchy is an enormous and harsh obstacle: forget being an actress, or even an industrious fisherwoman, and if you can’t get decent grades, then get well acquainted with fetching water from the well, just like your female ancestors before you.

What will particularly catch and impress viewers in After the Long Rains are its multifarious cinematography and compositions, or rather how Hauser resists settling on a single, uniform aesthetic. There’s an arsenal of visual schemes and disruptions that do somewhat obstructively draw attention to themselves – camerawork with the mobility of a hand-operated smartphone, myriad distortions and filtered manipulations of the image, and lenses that turn the camera subjects and scenery into near-psychedelic blotches – yet they’re always wedded to, and never detract from, the storytelling momentum, where Aisha finds a surrogate father in the fisherman Hassan (Bosco Baraka Karisa). With her own dad otherwise occupied as a motorcycle chauffeur, Hassan takes her out on the water, teaches her how to sail and stirs her imagination with tales of the “golden fish” his own father – also a fisherman – valiantly sought to pluck from the seas.

After the Long Rains is about breaking the cycle of continuity, on micro, macro and even extra-cinematic levels, dreaming of an Africa where you’re not merely set up to inherit your parents’ limited horizons (and Aisha’s own brother Omari follows this prerogative by starting up a successful imported fashion boutique). Maybe there’s a risk in assessing this film merely as a show of effort and industry from a still-developing filmmaker in Hauser, yet it’s still exhilarating to have a privileged perch from which to see his youthful experimentation, giving in to his temptation to obliterate any boundaries – here continental and cinematic – that restrain him.

After the Long Rains is a co-production by Kenya and Switzerland, staged by Damien Hauser and Art4um Production GmbH. Its sales are courtesy of Rushlake Media.