First award-winning documentaries at Gateway

Filmmakers Zeshawn and Aman Ali are planning a homecoming. Before their award-winning documentary two gods premieres on PBS on Monday, June 21, they share their work with Columbus.

This is the city that planted the seed for us to be storytellers, so it’s a thank you to the community, says film producer Aman. He and his brother, director Zeshawn, will screen the film on Saturday, June 5 at 4:30 p.m. and then participate in a question-and-answer session.

This is where we grew up. We wanted to come to Columbus because we were proud to be from here, says Aman. We were very lucky to have success with this film, and the city brought us up.

The documentary follows Hanif, a Muslim casket maker who mentors two young men from his community of Newark, New Jersey, in body washing rituals.

The process in Islam is called Janaza, explains Aman. This is basically the Islamic burial process. When someone dies, the body undergoes a ceremonial physical and spiritual flushing and the body is wrapped in a white cloth and buried. The whole process is very simple and very intimate and very spiritual. The beauty is that the community really comes together to help a grieving family. In the movie you really see that. You see Hanif really stepping up as families are so overwhelmed with the trauma and grief of losing a loved one.

Five years of preparation, two gods became something the brothers hadn’t originally envisioned.

We never really decided to make a movie, recalls Aman. It was just to hang out with Hanif. It’s not that we said, okay, this is where we were going to tell a story. It was fair, let’s date this guy, find out the community, find out the story. Then the bulbs started to come on: it’s not just a person we want to date, it’s a person we want other people to hang out with.

Aman thinks this is an important story for others as well.

He’s an amazing man who really takes these kids under his wing and does an amazing job in the community, he says. My brother and I live in New York now, but we grew up in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. I think we got fed up and frustrated that we didn’t see people who look like us as American Muslims on TV and in movies, so we’ve always had that desire to be represented. Even in the stories of Muslim Americans that you see in movies and on television today, it is often in a political context. It is often September 11, hate crimes, surveillance. For us, I think it was very important to point out that this was a story about a black American Muslim community with very rich and vibrant connections.

The film had an unexpected effect on the filmmakers when their own father passed away.

We were there, filming so many body washes, having to wash our own father, Aman recalls. Hanif was really that source of strength for us too. Especially during a pandemic, death is on everyone’s mind. When you lose someone, it can be overwhelming: filling out papers, thinking about gravestones, thinking about all those mundane little tasks that look like a mountain. We want people to start talking about death. It doesn’t have to be a scary subject. We try to talk about it in a poetic way. We want people to feel comfortable and uncomfortable.

two gods screened at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 5 or you can find it in the virtual screening room of the Gateway Film Centers.

For more information visit gatewayfilmcenter.org.

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