As someone who lives near Washington DC, it is obvious that the city (like most urban metropolitan areas) has been going through massive gentrification over the past decade. While this is good for the “development” and “revitalization” of a city, more often than not it loses a bit of its soul and the spirit that makes the city special to the people who were born and raised there. These days, most of the time when dealing with gentrification is about African Americans being forced out of their homes, but writer-director Zia Mohajerjasbi’s directorial debut Know your place examines gentrification and its impact on immigrant communities.
When Know your place begins, we are introduced to Robel (Joseph Smith), a first-generation Eritrean-American and his immigrant family living in Seattle. Like any teenager, he spends most of his time playing ball and chatting with his friends. His family lives in a close-knit Eritrean and Ethiopian community. They cook for each other, go to church together, and everything seems to be fine. But the town is going through changes. With the influx of people into their communities, property taxes are rising and, as a result, rents are rising. After the death of his father, his mother Amuna (Selawit Gebresus) and sister Fayven (Esther Kibreab) struggle to pay the bills and care for his ailing grandfather.
The first act does a great job of portraying this family as living and breathing characters that you absolutely fall in love with and Know your place It seems like it’s just about the family going about their daily lives and Robel experiencing his later teenage years as a coming of age film. However, the film changes direction when Amuna receives a late night call from her sister-in-law saying her child is sick and she desperately asks for money to be sent home so his medical expenses can be covered. Although the family doesn’t have much money, they still care for each other. She packs a suitcase full of medical supplies and some cash and asks Robel to take the suitcase to another member of the community who is returning home.
Thenceforth, Know your place becomes a haunting examination of not only the city of Seattle, but the immigrant communities living there as they adapt to a changing city. Robel teams up with his best friend Fahmi (Natnael Mebrahtu) as they attempt to trek across the city to drop off the suitcase. All sorts of things happen to them along the way. They try to get a ride from members of the community, but the rush hour of gentrification causes them to be abandoned. They take the subway, only for Robel to lose his phone. As they walk through neighborhoods they belong to and grew up in, they are now stopped by the police and must endure the often humiliating scenario of having to “prove” they are not criminals. They must deal with Karens who think they are stealing Amazon packages and all sorts of other problems as they move from one end of Seattle to the other.
Know your place is an incredibly powerful film that captures the soul of a community that is being pushed into the background by “progress.” Even the characters Robel and Fahmi meet on their adventure could easily have their own film with their own stories, as they live in a lived world full of community and love. The performances are outstanding, especially Joseph Smith and Natnael Mebrahtu, who appeared in the film for the first time and carried the entire film on their journey. Know your place explores the pain they (and members of their community) feel when they almost lose a city they love. It is very reminiscent of The last black man in San Francisco because the film is also a love letter not only to the people of the city but also to the city itself, which also turns out to be one of the main characters in the film. In his directorial debut, Zia Mohajerjasbi delivers a layered and emotional film that focuses on a community navigating a changing city while trying to maintain its identity and stay true to itself, it simply refuses to know its place.
Know your place is currently available in select cities.
