Brief Tender Light
13th September 2024
h. 18:30
Concorso Internazionale
Synopsis:
Making its world premiere at the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival 2023, “Brief Tender Light” is the first feature film by Ghanaian director Arthur Musah. The film follows four African undergraduates through MIT, America’s premier technological university and the director’s alma mater. Sante, Philip, Billy e Fidelis embark on their MIT education with individual ambitions: to engineer infrastructure in Tanzania; to secure a better life for family in Nigeria; to contribute to post-genocide reconstruction in Rwanda; to advance democracy in Zimbabwe. Their missions are distinct but fuelled by a common goal: to become agents of positive change back home. Immersed in the daily realities of America, the students are forced to decide how much of America to absorb and how much of Africa to hold on to. Through a decade-long journey between two continents, the director documents not only the students’ personal growth but also his own evolution, exploring how youthful idealism confronts adulthood and cross-cultural challenges.
Director’s notes:
As a teenager, I left Ghana, my home, and came to the U.S. to attend college at MIT. The flight that brought me to America was full of other African students headed to universities across the U.S. Years later, many of us are wondering what happened to our ambitions of returning home and making a difference in our countries of origin. Those questions inspired Brief Tender Light, which at its core is about whether youthful idealism can survive the process of growing up. As a gay man, I am also drawing on my experience of turning away from my Ghana and towards America in search of freedom to inform the film. Brief Tender Light is about how a teenager matures into adulthood through the college experience – how what they know and believe about themselves and the world are tested and refined by collisions with new ideas, people and experiences.