Focus on Ethiopia: Short Film Program + Closing Reception
Focus on Ethiopia: Short Film Program + Closing Reception
Black Europe Film Festival
6:00 PM Closing Reception · 7:15 PM Screening
A new generation of Ethiopian and Ethiopian American filmmakers is making waves—earning international recognition and critical acclaim for bold, innovative work that expands what cinema can look and feel like. The second edition of the Black Europe Film Festival closes with a special event celebrating their talent, imagination, and stories, bringing audiences into worlds shaped by memory, spirituality, place, and transformation.
Directors Ainslee Alem Robson (Ferenj: A Graphic Memoir in VR), Herrana Addisu (The River), and Beza Hailu Lemma (Alazar) will attend the screening and join an in-person conversation, offering a rare chance to hear directly about their creative process and the urgent questions driving their work.
ABOUT THE FILMS
THE RIVER | dir. Herrana Addisu | 2024 | Ethiopia | Amharic | Experimental documentary (short) | 18 min
The River is an award-winning, intimate, poetic short that explores women’s lived experiences in Ethiopia through tradition, memory, and resilience. Set to the rhythms of daily life along the riverbanks, the film follows a young woman navigating inherited customs, forced marriage, and gender-based violence. Water becomes both literal and symbolic: a source of beauty and sustenance, but also a burden that captures the tension between survival and sacrifice. A Qene Films production, the project was created with support from the SheaMoisture Blueprint Grant.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Director: Herrana Addisu is an award-winning film director, multidisciplinary artist, and social impact strategist passionate about using storytelling to drive systemic change. She is the founder of Chucha Studios. Her work has screened internationally and engages questions of human rights, gender justice, and advocacy.
ALAZAR | dir. Beza Hailu Lemma | 2024 | Ethiopia / France / Canada | Amharic | Fiction (short) | 35 min
In contemporary Ethiopia, a farming community’s exodus is shaken when the patriarch of a prominent family disappears from his grave. His son, Tessema, refuses the church’s divine explanation and launches his own search for answers. As suspicion spreads and certainties collapse, Alazar becomes a tense, atmospheric short that probes belief, authority, and the fragile line between the sacred and the real.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Director: Beza Hailu Lemma is a writer/director based in Addis Ababa whose work moves between documentary and fiction. His films include Ballad of the Spirits (2016), Katanga Nation (2022), and Alazar(2024). Katanga Nation screened internationally, winning the Silver Foal for Best Documentary Short Film. He has participated in Berlinale Talents, L’Atelier (Cannes), and TIFF Filmmakers Lab.