It was, says Teboho Edkins, “a film I didn’t want to make.” On 10 March 2019, his brother Max was among the 157 people killed when Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 crashed minutes after takeoff. Making a documentary about the disaster seemed impossible: “It’s not a sexy subject. At first, I really didn’t want to do it at all.”

But dad Don Edkins, a film-maker and anti-apartheid activist, had a therapist’s advice: “Try to use your creative talent to deal with this.” So they made An Open Field, a short documentary about grief - specifically, the grief of the rural Orthodox Christian Tewahedo community living on the crash site. “They have a very structured process of mourning,” Don says. “We felt that was very interesting because it helped us in our own mourning.”

The film shows the community’s 40-day mourning period, followed by seven years of anniversaries, after which “the healing starts taking place.” Don would visit annually, and “they would come in their hundreds for the anniversary to grieve with us.” The film captures men singing, drumming, and wailing, possessed by grief. Teboho says, “I tried to not make it very dramatic and emotional. I tried to withdraw myself from it as much as possible.”

The documentary also explores the unresolved demand for justice from Boeing, whose 737 Max jet crashed twice - the second after Lion Air flight JT610 killed 189 in October 2018 - both linked to the MCAS flight-control system. Don, from an activist background, wanted to confront “corporate greed and corruption.” Teboho, more abstract, sought solace. The tension: “Is it a film about Boeing or not?”

The film interviews the father of the pilot, Yared Getachew. Dr Getachew Tessema, a surgeon, accuses Boeing of shifting blame to the dead pilots: “They insisted to push [blame] to the captains, because they can’t defend themselves. They are dead.” Teboho notes a racist element in Western media: “It’s like: ‘African airline, African pilots, obviously they’ll fuck up.’”

Boeing’s spokesperson said: “We will never forget the lives lost… Their memory and the hard lessons from these accidents drive us every day.” The Edkins, meanwhile, are uniquely positioned: “We didn’t watch the whole thing happen. We just felt it.”