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This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection

Screenings Thurs., Sept. 10, 7 p.m.
a film still of a man sitting beneath a cross
Lehomah Jeremiah Moses, This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Ressurection, (2019), courtesy of Lehomah Jeremiah Moses
When
Thurs., Sept. 10, 2026, 7–10 p.m.
Where
Art Theater
Tickets
Tickets available April 2026

A film by by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese

This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection centers on Mantoa, an elderly woman in a remote Lesotho village who has lost her entire family. Ready for death, she prepares for her burial and hopes to join her ancestors. Her final wish is disrupted when the government announces plans to flood the valley for a dam project, forcing the community to relocate and destroying its land, graves, and history. What begins as private grief becomes collective resistance as Mantoa refuses to abandon the burial ground, transforming her sorrow into defiance. She becomes an unlikely leader, urging villagers to protect their dignity and ancestral memory. Faced with displacement, religious authority, and state power, the community fractures between resignation and rebellion. The film culminates in a poetic confrontation between mortality and modernity, where Mantoa’s personal refusal becomes a spiritual uprising—asserting that death itself can be an act of resistance against erasure.

Carnegie Museum of Art Film Series

The 2026 Carnegie Museum of Art Film Series gathers films that harness the power of visual poetry to honor and celebrate the human spirit under pressure. Across histories marked by colonialism and imperialism, and within the quiet or collective gestures of defiance amid political turmoil, these works illuminate stories of resistance and endurance. The narratives on screen, as well as the stories behind the making of these films, affirm community, interconnectedness, and resistance. Resisting political determinism. Resisting cynicism and moral compromise. Resisting intellectual sloth and civic inaction. Resisting fear. Each film interweaves striking imagery with profound social insight, revealing how individuals and communities navigate oppression, upheaval, and transformation. Through their lyrical language, these films not only document struggle, but also celebrate the resilience, creativity, and hope that continue to surface even in the most challenging circumstances.

For the 2026 Film Series, Kigali-based filmmaker and artist Kivu Ruhorahoza programs 7 monthly screenings in tandem with the 59th Carnegie International, taking as his prompt the exhibition’s approach to expansive ways of being in practice with art, and its support of artists across geographies whose works actively configure social life and collective experiences. Identifying “resistance, community, and interconnectedness” as through lines, Ruhorahoza presents a selection of films that offer pathways through the complexities of histories and contemporary circumstances.