Difret [imdb translates it to Oblivion, in the movie it said Courage – I don’t know what’s true]
Director: Zeresenay Mehari
Writer: Zeresenay Mehari
Cast: Meron Getnet, Tizita Hagere
Part of: FrauenFilmTage
Seen on: 02.03.2015

[Trigger Warning: Rape]

Plot:
Meaza (Meron Getnet) works for a legal aid organization she herself has founded and that provides legal counceling and help for abused women in Addis Abbaba. When she hears of the case regarding Hirut (Tizita Hagere), a 14 year old girl who was kidnapped as part of a wedding ritual on her way home from school, beaten, raped and then arrested when she managed to kill one of her attackers, and is now facing a death sentence, Meaza makes it her personal mission to help and free Hirut.

Difret tells a horrifying story based on true events and, probably due to the fact that it was made in Ehtiopia by Ethiopians, it manages to show the logic and legal system behind Hirut’s situation without making it feel like it’s talking about “backward Africans who just haven’t found true Western/Northern Justice yet”. I don’t know if you can enjoy a film about a story like this, but it is certainly a good film.

Difret follows very classical cinematic structures which means that in the way the story is told, there aren’t really any surprises. You know when things will go wrong for the protagonists and you know that it will all end well. Sometimes it felt like you could predict it right down to the camera angles. But that conservative style doesn’t hurt the film and I’ve said more than once that more often than not those structures were established because they work.

That is also true here. The story is told effectively and manages to convey (almost) all the positions clearly and show the logic that underlies them. They falter a bit with the police and the prosecutor, but they take extra care to show the traditional Ethiopian way as well and how things came to be at first and how they are usually handled outside of court – which was very interesting.

That doesn’t mean that the movie isn’t critical. The practice of abduction, the injustice being done to Hirut, the men’s insistence on their privilege and power – these are all commented on by the film and it is far from a neutral comment. But this criticism doesn’t come from a place of colonialism that automatically devalues all African/Ethiopian system as backward.

Those politics are at the very heart of the film, sidelining everything else – from production design to acting. Though all of that isn’t bad at all, it just isn’t the focus of the film. And that is very okay.

Summarizing: Interesting and well done.