A high-achieving student with a promising future finds her life drastically altered after being impregnated by a trusted adult. When her community fails her due to patriarchal cultural expectations and traditions, she takes control to seek justice and shape her destiny.
In rural Botswana, Rati Kemelo, a high-achieving student, has her life turned upside down when her teacher, Mr. Moses, begins grooming her, showering her with gifts and money. Succumbing to his manipulation, Rati breaks up with her teenage boyfriend and enters into a secret relationship with Mr. Moses, which leads to an unplanned pregnancy. When Mr. Moses abandons her, and her friends and community shun her, Rati becomes an outcast. Expelled from school while her teacher retains his position, Rati takes matters into her own hands to seek justice. Determined to reclaim her future, she defies societal norms, seeks an abortion, and convinces her mother to move to the city, where she goes after the scholarship she lost.
Thato R. Mwosa is an award-winning illustrator, screenwriter, playwright, and filmmaker. Her films have been broadcast nationally and internationally. Her first feature film, Memoirs of a Black Girl, premiered at the 2021 Boston Globe’s Black History Month Film Festival, and it won the Best Feature Film award at the 2021 Hamilton Black Film Festival and the 2021 Roxbury International Film Festival (RIFF). Additionally, Thato won Best Feature Director at the 2021 Hamilton Film Festival. She has been featured on NPR and the Boston Globe.
Thato was a finalist for the 2019 Mass Cultural Art Fellowship in the Dramatic Writing category. Thato's latest script, Rati, was selected for The Stowe Narrative Lab (2024) and the prestigious Meryl Streep funded The Writer's Lab NYC (2024)
Thato has taught film and screenwriting classes at Boston University, Harvard University, and Lesley University and is an Assistant Professor at Emerson College.
