As someone who lives in proximity to Washington DC, it’s evidently clear over the last decade-plus that the city (like most urban metropolitan areas) that the city’s going through mass gentrification. While it’s good for “development” and “revitalization” of a city, most of the time it loses a little bit of its soul and the spirit that makes the city something special for the people who were born and raised there. Now most of the time when tackling gentrification, it’s about African Americans being pushed out of their homes, but writer/director Zia Mohajerjasbi’s directorial debut Know Your Place examines gentrification and how it impacts immigrant communities.
When Know Your Place begins, we meet 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 talking smack with his friends. His family lives in a close-knit Eritrean and Ethiopian community. They cook for each other, they go to church together, and everything seems fine. But the city is going through changes. With the influx of people through their communities, property taxes are increasing, and as a result, rent is increasing. After the death of his father, his mother Amuna (Selawit Gebresus) and sister Fayven (Esther Kibreab) are struggling to pay the bills and take care of his ailing grandfather.
The first act does a great setting up this family as living and breathing characters you absolutely fall in love with and at first Know Your Place seems like it’ll just be about the family as they deal with their day-to-day and Robel just navigating his later teens as a coming-of-age film. However, the film pivots as Amuna gets a call late at night from her sister-in-law saying that her child is sick and desperately asks for money to be sent back home so that his medical expenses can be taken care of. Even though the family is not flush with cash, they still look out for each other. She packs a suitcase full of medical supplies as well as some cash and asks Robel to take the suitcase to another member of the community who is going back home.
From there on, Know Your Place becomes a powerful examination of not only the city of Seattle, but the immigrant communities that live in it as they are adjusting to a changing city. Robel links up with his best friend Fahmi (Natnael Mebrahtu) as they try and trek across the city to drop off the suitcase. All sorts of things happen to them as a result. They try and get rides from members of the community, but all the rush hour of gentrification causes them to be abandoned. They take the metro, only for Robel to lose his phone. Walking through neighborhoods they are a part of and grew up in, they now get stopped by the police and have to do the ever so often humiliating scenario where they have to “prove” they aren’t criminals. They have to deal with Karens who think they are stealing Amazon packages and all sorts of other issues as they go from one end of Seattle to the other.
Know Your Place is an incredibly impressive film as it captures the soul of a community that’s being left in the cracks due to “progress.” Even the characters Robel and Fahmi meet as they go on their adventure could easily have their own movie with their own stories as they exist in a lived-in world, full of community and love. The performances are outstanding, especially Joseph Smith and Natnael Mebrahtu, who were first-time actors in the film and pretty much carried the entire movie as they go on their journey. Know Your Place examines the pain they (and members of their community) feel as they are almost losing a city that they love. It’s very reminiscent of The Last Black Man of San Francisco as the film is also a love letter to not only the people of the city, but the city itself which also proves to be one of the main characters of the film. In his directorial debut, Zia Mohajerjasbi delivers a layered and emotional film focusing on a community as they navigate a changing city while trying to maintain their identity and remain true to themselves, they simply refuse to know their place.
Know Your Place is currently available in select cities.
