The Inheritance

Ephraim Asili continues to explore the African diaspora, as well as his place and role in it. This marks his feature film debut with a meta-textual film, centered on a community of black artists and activists, in West Philadelphia, who want to create a collective. At the same time, it interweaves a remembrance of the MOVE liberation movement, bombed by the Philadelphia police in 1985.

Ephraim Asili, African-American filmmaker, convenes in his first feature film the theme of choice of his short films - the African diaspora, as well as his place in this context. After showing Fluid Frontiers at IndieLisboa in 2018, where we saw (and heard) a Detroit community reading African-American poets, Asili now makes his debut in competition at the festival. With a meta-textual film that follows a community of black Philadelphia artists and activists living in a house that has strict guidelines (and recalls the MOVE movement founded by John Africa, that defended anarcho-primitive principles). The common space will serve for housing, for education and for the creation of a politicized conscience. It is in this logic that, little by little, we realize that the utopia of the encounter can quickly become something else. (Miguel Valverde)

Director's Bio

Born in 1979 in Roslyn, Pennsylvania, USA. He studied film and video art and works as a filmmaker, DJ and radio host in New York. After several short and medium-length works, The Inheritance is his first feature.