On Wednesday, January 15th, Gesa Power House Theatre presents the film Know Your Place.
Set against the rapidly changing landscape of Seattle, Know Your Place is a poignant slice-of-life drama following 15-year-old Robel Haile, an Eritrean-American boy, as he embarks on a seemingly simple errand that transforms into an emotional journey. Tasked with delivering a huge and heavy suitcase across town, destined for a sick family member in his parents ‘homeland’, Robel and his best friend Fahmi must navigate Seattle’s evolving streets while confronting themes of family responsibility, identity, and the dislocation caused by economic displacement.
The film explores the essence of home—what it means to a young boy at a time of personal transition and to a city undergoing significant redevelopment. Director Zia Mohajerjasbi captures Seattle’s beauty and reflects on the dissolution of communities, making Know Your Place both a love letter and a lament for a hometown in flux.
Director Statement
It is personal as an attempt to capture the beauty of the place that raised me and those I keep company with, in this moment of rapid transition; in which the disappearance of the familiar continues to gain momentum with increasing scope and intensity. The dissolution of community, economic displacement, and redevelopment of legacy neighborhoods has made part of the city to which I’d been intimately connected almost unrecognizable. This film is about capturing some sense of what Seattle is, what it has been, what it is becoming. It is a film about home.
Through an intimate narrative lens and characterization, “Know Your Place” depicts impermanence as a relative experience. The film centers this experience through the eyes of Robel, an Eritrean-American boy of 15 years, at a time of transition in his own life, within the greater transitional context of Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. The film’s key performers are almost all first-time actors or second-time collaborators with me. I am unwaveringly committed to a methodology that embraces storytelling as a universal human trait. As tools to filmmakers become more available, the localization of cinema is vital – adding nuance, specificity, potency and authenticity to stories represented in film. No story is “too small”.
In essence, “Know Your Place” is an exercise in this process – reflecting the possibilities of storytelling in cinema that is grounded in community, friendship and ongoing cultural exchange. This film is as independent and homegrown as it gets: a diverse cross section of our city’s inhabitants, collaborating to bring a story of ‘home’ to life in a way that honors the beauty of our shared space, and the nuance of the individual experiences contained within it.
– Zia Mohajerjasbi, Seattle, WA, September 2022
Reserved seating tickets will be available for $15 ($10 for students) either online or by calling the box office at 509-529-6500, starting on November 15th, 2024.
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