There is something terrifying about the landscapes around the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, with the unsettling mumbled murmur contrasting with the serene sounds of nature. We listen to radio show fragments and off-screen voices, the ordinary discussions of which only amplify the anticipative anxiety of an imminent disaster we can’t yet see, but feel intuitively on a visceral level. The wide shots and the steady pan shots of the changing Ethiopian landscape evoke a heavy uneasiness. The city’s poverty-ridden peripheries give the sensation of a construction site without a completion date, with the voices of the locals overlapping in collective lamentation as they whisper about expropriations, state crimes, ethnic issues, and protests which are never explained, but only hinted at. The movie offers us glimpses from a divided and tensed social reality. We witness a country in transition from the rural to the urban, where agriculture is gradually swallowed up by industrialization, the collateral victims of which we watch in resignation. The tectonic shifts and the active volcanoes which threaten to transform the area over time seem but a reflection of the social tensions, with ecological changes faithfully mimicking the social ones. (Monica Stan)
AUDIO: Amhara, Oromo
SUBTITLE: Romanian, English
awards and festivals
FIFAAC Bordeaux, Franța 2021 - Best Film Students Award + Special Mention International Competition
Traces de Vie, Clermont-Ferrand, Franța 2021 - Prix de Creation
Zeichen der Nacht, Germania 2021 - Jury Award
Signs of the Night Bangkok, Thailanda 2021 - Main Award
Milano Design Film Festival, Milano, Italia 2021 - Best Film, Architecture Film Award
HotDocs Toronto, Canada 2021
FIPADOC Biarritz, France
Ethnocineca, Austria 2021
Perspektiven/Le P'tit Ciné, Belgia 2021
FESPACO Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso 2021
FIDBA Buenos Aires 2021
DOK Leipzig, Germania 2020 - DEFA Award
Signos da Noite Lisboa, Portugalia 2020 - Signs Award