As one of two winners of the Sundance Catalyst Grant, Dedza Films funded an audience campaign to support the release of Saul Williams & Anisia Uzeyman's afrofuturist musical Neptune Frost.

Among other things, Dedza extended the film's audience reach through special event screenings, a limited edition vinyl of the film's pivotal soundtrack, and an online journal of writing about the film, its intersections and extended community.

In her hypnotic documentary feature, Ethiopian-Mexican filmmaker Jessica Beshir explores the coexistence of everyday life and its mythical undercurrents. Though a deeply personal project—Beshir was forced to leave her hometown of Harar with her family as a teenager due to growing political strife—the film she returned to make about the city, its rural Oromo community of farmers, and the harvesting of the country’s most sought-after export (the euphoria-inducing khat plant) is neither a straightforward work of nostalgia nor an issue-oriented doc about a particular drug culture. Rather, she has constructed something dreamlike: a film that uses light, texture, and sound to illuminate the spiritual lives of people whose experiences often become fodder for ripped-from-the-headlines tales of migration. A Janus Films release. A New Directors/New Films 2021 selection.