Shadows of the Past
(25:08, Namibia & USA, 2025)
In the wake of a forgotten 20th-century genocide, Shadows of the Past explores the fragments of memory, identity, and resistance left behind by the Herero and Nama peoples after German colonial forces carried out one of history’s earliest acts of racial extermination. Weaving together personal testimony, archival imagery, and experimental forms such as dance and collage, the film meditates on generational trauma and the struggle to be heard. As debates over Germany’s recent reparations deal expose deep political and emotional rifts, Shadows of the Past asks what it means to seek justice when history has tried to erase you.
A segment from Shadows of the Past, No Shame is a poem written by Jephta Nguherimo, a Namibian-Herero American poet and activist whose work preserves the memory of the Herero and Nama genocide while advocating for justice.
