A short film entitled Gerreta by DW’s Mantegaftot Sileshi, is competing for a prize at this year’s desert film festival, FESPACO. The event in Burkina Faso puts African cinema in the spotlight.
The film opens with a man running down an alleyway, chased by a furious mob. His fast breathing reflects his deep panic. As he runs, he fears for his life. He has been accused of stealing and the machete, stick and rock-wielding crowd are seeking revenge.
The eight-minute-long feature film is entitled Gerreta which means ‘mob’ in the Ethiopian lingua franca Amharic. But Gerreta also means confusion. The film’s title suggests that filmmaker Mantegaftot Sileshi Siyoum wants to convey more than just a simple story.
“The title of the film is just the first layer of the concept,” said Mantegaftot or Mante, as he likes to be called.
Through Gerreta, Mante puts the spotlight on mob justice and its effects in Ethiopia, a country where even a small-time pickpocket can face the death penalty, carried out by an angry crowd.
But aside from the phenomenon of mob justice, the Ethiopian filmmaker also turns the mirror to the world of the thief and the reasons that drive many like him to become burglars.
“When you go deep into the story, it isn’t just about a man stealing and trying to feed his daughter and then being chased away by a mob. I wanted to express a much deeper concept,” he said.
Nothing that happens in the film, happens by coincidence. Mante has infused every piece of scenery, every prop, with a deeper meaning.
On one level, the story may be fiction but it also portrays the daily lives of many people in poorer neighborhoods of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
Read the complete story at Deutsche Welle
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