Behind the rise of Ethiopian cinema is an even more remarkable tale of the women who—as writers, directors, producers, and scholars—were leaders in this transformation.

The prominent role of women in the industry may set Ethiopia apart from most other countries. Across the globe, from Hollywood to Bollywood, film and TV industries have been dominated by men. In the United States, the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University and the website Women and Hollywood have shown that only 12 percent of directors, 20 percent of writers, and 26 percent of producers are women, even though 51 percent of audiences are.

In Africa, the 1960s-era founding manifestoes of cinema institutions, such as the famous FESPACO festival in Burkina Faso, are committed to decolonization, racial equality and women’s empowerment; so, in principle, they are more progressive than the United States. Nevertheless, the history of African cinema is generally recounted as a succession of male directors, like kings inheriting the FESPACO throne: Ousmane Sembene. Souleymane Cissé. Idrissa Ouédraogo. Abderrahmane Sissako. The pattern has stuck despite proactive efforts, beginning in the 1990s, by festival organizers and institutions such as the Centre for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema to empower African women to make movies.

So, what is different in Ethiopia?

On frequent visits in recent years, I’ve met with some of Ethiopia’s prominent filmmakers as well as professors of film and theater history at Addis Ababa University. They’re well aware of what the movie industries are like in other parts of the world and point out that Ethiopia, too, is no paradise for women. Sexism and gender disparities in financing and lending to entrepreneurs remain pervasive, despite the nation’s constitution prohibiting discrimination. And while no agency in Ethiopia has analyzed the issue of gender in the media industry, my own informal survey of the lists of films licensed by the Addis Ababa Bureau of Culture and Tourism indicates that the gender ratios are similar to the United States.

What’s different in Ethiopia is women’s influence and success in the movie business. In a highly competitive industry where many people never make more than one movie, women have consistently enjoyed more enduring success as writers, directors, and producers. Films made by women have tended to do better at the box office and have won many trophies at the nation’s annual Gumma film awards.

Quite a few of the “firsts” in Ethiopia’s cinema history were accomplished by innovative women. After the nation transitioned away from the Derg regime, under which film and television were financed and controlled by the government, the first person to risk privately financing an independent movie was Rukiya Ahmed, with Tsetzet (directed by Tesfaye Senke on U-matic in 1993) about a detective solving a murder case.

Arsema Worku. Courtesy of Steven W. Thomas.

Later, one of the first movies to make the switch from celluloid to video was Yeberedo Zemen (translated as Ice Age) by Helen Tadesse. She originally intended the movie as a situation comedy for Ethiopian TV, but, after a contract dispute, she decided to re-edit the episodes into a single movie. In 2002, it was the first Ethiopian movie shot on VHS to be exhibited in a theater, and it sparked a revolution in the nation’s movie industry.

With the switch from celluloid to VHS, and subsequently to digital filmmaking, local cinema culture blew up, with films growing in number and diversity. Many women seized on the new opportunities to follow Tadesse’s lead, and a number quickly became industry leaders.

One such leader is Arsema Worku, a member of the executive board for Ethiopia’s Film Producers Association, which lobbies on behalf of filmmakers. In addition to being an actress, Worku has written, directed, and produced movies for theater release. Her most recent feature is Emnet (2016), about a married woman who feels trapped managing the home and caring for her baby all day and dreams of an exciting career of her own.

One of Ethiopia’s most prolific and successful directors is Kidist Yilma. Her popular movie Rebuni (2015) won Ethiopia’s most prestigious award, the Gumma. It is about a young woman, Adey, who fights to protect her grandfather’s small farm from being taken over by a corporation. For all the success of Rebuni, she told me, when I met with her and her husband, actor Amanuel Habtamu, that the film that means the most to her is Meba, a movie that takes the audience inside the head of a schizophrenic patient in a mental hospital.

Kidist Yilma. Courtesy of Steven W. Thomas.

These films are local productions, with budgets that are relatively small compared to the international films that Americans and Europeans often watch in art-house theaters. But Ethiopia also has some multinational co-productions, the most internationally successful of which was Difret (2014), whose executive producer was American actress Angelina Jolie.

Based on a true story, Difret dramatizes the kidnapping of child brides in rural areas by focusing on the court case of a young girl who shot her would-be husband in self-defense. Four years after the film’s release, the real-life lawyer and women’s rights activist Meaza Ashenafi, who inspired the movie’s heroine, became the first woman to be appointed president of the Federal Supreme Court of Ethiopia.

The fame of both Jolie and Ashenafi may have overshadowed the fact that one of the producers and visionaries for the film was Dr. Mehret Mandefro, whose first movie, the documentary All of Us (2008), recounts her experience as a medical doctor treating HIV-AIDS both in New York and in Ethiopia. In that film, she comes to the important conclusion that, in New York City as in rural Ethiopia, poverty and the disempowerment of women have exacerbated the HIV-AIDS epidemic.

Men and women in the film and media industry have often worked together to tackle difficult and important subjects such as disease, domestic abuse, mental illness, and conflict between the rich and the poor. For example, a movie that won awards at international festivals was The Price of Love (2015), the third movie written and directed by Hermon Hailay. This brutally honest portrait of the life of a prostitute explores human trafficking and the dark underbelly of urban life. Before writing the script, Hermon researched her subject, spending weeks getting to know some of these women, which is perhaps why the movie feels so shockingly real.

Another major film, on the plight of migrant female workers from Ethiopia, is Sewnetwa (2019), written and produced by Eskedar Girmay with financial support from the International Labor Organization and the Ethiopian Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. At its debut, the first woman to be president of Ethiopia, H.E. Sahle-Work Zewde, delivered the opening speech.

Ethiopia is a diverse country of more than 80 ethnic groups. Most filmmakers, whatever their mother-tongue may be, make their movies in Amharic, the national language taught in schools across the country. However, some also choose to make movies in their own language such as Tigrinya, Afan Oromo, or Somali.

Keyirat Yusuf. Courtesy of Steven W. Thomas.

The Oromo, who are one of the largest ethnic groups in Ethiopia, have experienced a cultural renaissance in recent years, revitalizing their indigenous form of democracy known as the “Gada system” that in 2016 was recognized by UNESCO as an intangible world heritage. Oromo filmmakers often draw upon Gada principles for their movie production, distribution, and consumption. A common theme in Oromo scripts by both male and female writers is how the indigenous traditions that empower women in their communities can be modernized and adapted to 21st-century life.

Some of the up-and-coming Oromo women making movies today are Seble Wada, producer of the movie Wada; Seenaa Solomon, director of Xiqii; and Hawi Hailu, director of Lafaaf Lafee. The most well-known is Keyirat Yusuf. She got her start as an actress in Dire Dawa before moving to Addis Ababa to join the first Oromo-language show on Ethiopian television, Dhanga. She eventually emigrated to Chicago, where she made her first movie Asaantii (2015) about adapting to life in America. Her second movie Siifan (2017) reflects upon the experience of refugee women who have endured sexual and physical abuse. Like many Ethiopian filmmakers, Keyirat is not only an actor and director, but also a writer and producer. In our conversations, she told me that one of the most important skills she learned was editing.

Women have shaped the industry in other ways as well. Until 2014, Ethiopia’s television stations tended to produce their own content—mostly news and a few serial dramas—and there was little connection between the movie industry and television. But an entrepreneur named Feven Tadesse envisioned a different way of doing things. She created the first show on Ethiopian television to not only broadcast new, locally made movies but also discuss them. Viewers can vote on their favorite movies via text message. Tadesse’s company, Maverick Films, has also produced two movies, including the Gumma award-winning Lomi Shita, which is a complex, multifaceted reflection upon Ethiopia’s history and its identity.

Feven Tadesse. Courtesy of Steven W. Thomas.

All of these filmmakers have had different experiences and offer different views on the position of women in the industry. Some consider themselves feminists, some do not. Some have had mostly positive experiences in the industry, but others feel unsupported. And some herald from diverse, international backgrounds, such as the New York-based Mexican Ethiopian filmmaker Jessica Beshir, whose documentary shorts offer poetic portraits of life. The reality on the ground is complicated, and it is changing.

Ethiopia’s various civic and academic venues contribute positively to the changes by fostering discussion of gender representation. For example, the Alatinos Filmmakers Association has provided a forum where aspiring filmmakers can meet, debate, and share work. Another organization called Sandscribe has hosted free film classes for the public. Addis Ababa University, which famously occupies the grounds of one of the former palaces of Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie, started a new master’s degree film program in 2014.

A leading expert on the Ethiopian motion picture industry is Eyerusalem Kassahun, a theater arts professor at Addis Ababa University. In addition to teaching classes on stage directing and film history, she has also written, produced, and directed her own movie that was quite successful in the theaters, Traffic Cop (2013), a romantic comedy about a female officer who falls in love with a taxi driver.

Kassahun also wrote the first scholarly article on women’s contributions to Ethiopia’s movie industry for a book called Cine-Ethiopia: the History and Politics of Film in the Horn of Africa published by Michigan State University Press in 2018. Her chapter in that book was a breakthrough. Before she set the record straight, virtually every account of Ethiopia’s movie industry, from scholarly journals to local newspapers in Addis Ababa, had focused exclusively on a handful of prominent men such as Haile Gerima, Michel Papatakis, Solomon Bekele Weya, Birhanu Shibiru, Theodros Teshome, and Henok Ayele. Since her groundbreaking work, perception has begun to catch up with reality.

That book sets the record straight in other ways. Before its publication, the only Ethiopian filmmakers whom Americans knew much about were the two who lived in America: Gerima and Salem Mekuria. The book also shows that Ethiopia’s film industry has a complicated relationship to the various ancient traditions and religious practices of its many different ethnic groups. Point being, the artistic work of Ethiopian women does not fit neatly into any singular category.

International acknowledgments of women’s leadership role in Ethiopian film and TV remain rare. That’s everyone’s loss, because Ethiopian cinema challenges the stereotypes, common among Americans and Europeans, that Ethiopia is less progressive than they are and that Ethiopian women would find better opportunities if they left. Indeed, women’s successes in Ethiopia turns the stereotype on its head, and suggests that it is Hollywood that may need to try harder to keep up.

The women of Ethiopia’s growing movie industry are inspiring. In my conversations with them, they express a love for making movies and a deep appreciation for their colleagues in the industry, both male and female. They also represent a diversity of perspectives. Some make movies foregrounding the value of tradition, family, and community while others champion the aspiration of the individual in a changing world. Some feel quite connected to the centers of power in the movie industry, while others feel marginalized from it or even live in a state of exile from their homeland. Whatever their position, their multicultural contribution to our world is vital.

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The story is the oft-related tale of Kaldi the goatherd. As the story goes, after Kaldi watched his flock jump excitedly around after eating berries from a certain bush, the goatherd decided to taste the beans for himself. As one version would have it, after crunching the berries in his mouth, the young man burst into song and poetry—behavior that likely sparked the interest of those around him. Whatever actually transpired, with that taste of berry, Kaldi is said to have plucked the coffee bean from obscurity, after centuries of anonymity. But the legend of Kaldi (which likely recounts events that took place much earlier in history), shrouds the fact that coffee was already a private pleasure for humans several centuries earlier.

Indeed, around 525 C.E., approximately 300 years before the date assigned to our goatherd, coffee plants journeyed out of Ethiopia with the armies of the Axumite Kingdom as they invaded the Himyarite Kingdom in Yemen, where they remained for the next 50 years. As it happened, the locale shared similar climate and geography to their own highlands. So, not surprisingly, members of the invading Akumites soon introduced coffee cultivation there, sowing the seeds of Yemen’s future dominance of the coffee trade.

This act of early colonialism brings an interesting challenge to the place of Kaldi and his friends as the world’s earliest coffee consumers. If the original story involved the chewing of the coffee cherries among those who lived in Ethiopia, it is a Yemeni myth that places the first coffee drinkers in this region of the Arabian Peninsula.

According to local Yemen lore, the first person to drink coffee was actually a priest who was banished to the mountains for unsuitable behavior toward the daughter of the king. Facing sure starvation, the young man supposedly discovered a plant with white flowers and survived by drinking a fluid he extracted from its beans. Having made it through his exile, the priest took the beans with him on a pilgrimage to Mecca, thus serving as the first exporter of one of today’s most important commodities.

To shore up its claim as the home of coffee drinking, Yemen offers up another legend—of a Sufi dervish named Hadji Omar, who was driven by his enemies out of Mocha into the desert where, also to ward off starvation, he tasted berries he found growing on a shrub. Finding them unacceptably bitter, the dervish first roasted them and then tried to soften them with water so they could be eaten more easily. The latter did little to improve their edibility, but the brown liquid that Sufi produced roused him from his lethargy and raised his spirits. When Omar returned to Mocha, his survival was considered a miracle, and the coffee drink he discovered achieved great popularity.

The folklore presented above offers far more than just a series of entertaining stories. It connects the human story to botanical truth. Archaeological evidence demonstrates the ancient coffee plant most likely came from what is today Ethiopia. Other scientific evidence suggests that coffee bean and plants ended up in Yemen in the second decade of the 6th century. In this version of events, Ethiopia and Yemen can each rightly claim a share in the origin story of the pleasures of coffee.

Legends are useful because they allow us to piece together what may have happened after the discovery was made that the beans, while bitter, were not poisonous. If the latter were the case there may well have been a lot of dead goats, and we would all be drinking some other stimulating beverage to get through a long afternoon.

Critically examining the historical forces that shape such legends also force us to reckon with some important contemporary issues—not the least of which is the equity historically denied to growers and harvesters.

The C. Arabica species of coffee that was first consumed in Ethiopia and Yemen remains the most prized, with those grown at higher altitudes still commanding the highest prices on the world market. Yemen, in fact, enjoyed a monopoly on the export of coffee beans that lasted throughout the Medieval and early modern periods, as the country exported the beans to an ever-expanding cadre of devotees across the globe. That only changed in the mid-17th century when, as yet another anecdote has it, a few plants were smuggled out of the Port of Mocha by a Portuguese merchant. With this theft, coffee became part of Europe’s colonial enterprises. And yet, despite the horrors of the conflict that currently ravages Yemen, it is still possible to obtain its coffee—allowing those of us fortunate enough to live in relative safety to support the livelihood of those farmers whose connections to coffee date back centuries.

Easier to acquire today, coffee continues to occupy a prominent place in the economy of Ethiopia, where significant efforts have been introduced to celebrate coffee’s rich past there, as well as ensure its viability well into the future. Since 2008, particular attention has been paid to sustainable practices that ensure a fair market price for the beans, guarantee equity for the small-scale farmers that produce 95 percent of Ethiopia’s agricultural output—of which coffee and sesame seeds are the leading products—and to the teaching of practices that prevent the degradation of the land.

Today, an estimated 2 billion cups of coffee are consumed each day by people around the world with a sworn love for it. The place of coffee in our daily lives and imaginations, however, is all the richer if we take a moment to appreciate the history of how it got here today. Food and drink, after all, have the power to connect us, across time and distance, to strangers who in another age might have been our friends. Through a combination of curiosity, experimentation, and some distant highlands, hundreds of years ago, this curious bean was first found to be suitable for drinking. Its origin story is a potent brew—and appreciating it makes that first bitter sip of a new coffee drinker today just a bit sweeter.

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Saudi Arabia has strict naturalization laws. Foreign workers are granted iqamas, or residency permits, but these are temporary. Some day, my mother, who is now the nursing supervisor at Prince Naif Security Forces Hospital, must leave Saudi Arabia. (My father must leave, too, but he has been out of contact with the family for several years.) For her, as for her children, this means leaving the place that feels like home.

The idea of Riyadh as home might sound strange to readers in a place like Los Angeles, where I’m living now. Life in Saudi Arabia is often portrayed as disagreeable. In many ways, it is disagreeable. But home is what you know, and you can love it despite its flaws.

I do love home. I love the annual Eid celebrations after Ramadan and all the foods that people prepare, like kapsa, a chicken and rice dish. I love family traditions like ordering from the Chinese restaurant on Christmas. I love the hole-in-the-wall shop that serves foul (fava bean stew) and fresh oven-baked bread. I love the way Saudis within the same sex greet one another with numerous affectionate handshakes and kisses on the cheek, even if they see each other every day. (I hadn’t realized until I took a trip back to Riyadh how much I missed those hugs and greetings. When I recently attended a wedding with my mom and twin sister it took us an age to make the rounds of greetings before we could get to our seats.)

But the heart and the law are different things. My legal home is Ethiopia. That is my father’s country. My alternative–but not legal–home is Eritrea. That is my mother’s country. From 1998 to 2000, Ethiopia and Eritrea had a border war, and the two countries still have a hostile relationship. So the only country where I’m allowed to live permanently is at near-war with the only country in which my mother is allowed to live permanently.

Discovering that I’d eventually have to leave Saudi Arabia was hard. What did it mean for me to be a citizen of Ethiopia, a country I didn’t know? When I was a kid we had a lot of fraught family meetings, but they generally concerned things like chores and curfews. None were about our geographical predicament.

The question of home was made even more complicated by language. My first language is English. It’s what all of us wound up speaking at school, work, and home. My second language is Arabic. Tigrinya, the language of Eritrea, is what I spoke until I was six, but I have forgotten it. I never spoke Amharic, the language of Ethiopia. I’ll have to learn it.

My childhood education was at a private school in Riyadh that followed the British academic system, and my classmates came from all over the world. But we had very little contact with Saudis. I have Saudi friends, but I met them as the children of friends of my mother. As a rule, Saudis get little exposure to the rest of the world. They can attend only government–controlled public schools. All classes are taught in Arabic, and students are segregated by gender. Most learn very little English.

Religion was a persistent complication in the lives of many foreigners. Saudi Arabia is one hundred percent Muslim, mostly Sunni. My mother was brought up Catholic. While she tried to imbue us with some of her faith, it was done quietly, because Saudi Arabia forbids the practice of any religion besides Islam. (One mother of a classmate of mine ran a covert Sunday school that I attended for a summer with about thirty other kids, but eventually the authorities found out and shut it down.) Some foreigners who move to the Kingdom convert to Islam–often opportunistically–but my mother never did. Saudi friends often asked us why.

When I was growing up, my Eritrean grandmother liked to ask me which country I considered home: Ethiopia or Eritrea. I’d tease her by refusing to pick one. But the real answer was that neither was home.

My first visit to Ethiopia was in the summer of 2000, when I was ten. In preparation, my sister and I wrote letters to family members in Ethiopia and practiced Amharic on a tutorial DVD. (It featured creepy talking stick figures that still haunt me.) We toured Addis Ababa, ate at local restaurants, traveled to neighboring villages, and visited landmarks. I enjoyed my trip, but it was like a vacation. Only when we were meeting relatives (with whom we struggled to communicate) did Ethiopia feel like anything but a foreign country. We eventually returned three more times, but only for short trips.

As for Eritrea, it is a place I visited once, when I was four. I remember how fun it was to go to the cinema for the first time and how the air smelled when it rained. Otherwise, the country was just an idea.

When I reached my senior year of high school, my classmates began to apply for universities in Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Americas. Graduation would scatter us across the world.

My twin sister and I wanted to apply for college in the United States. Our older brother had moved to Denver a year earlier, so we had a small foothold in the country. Still, we wanted to live independently of him. Every family member, every family friend–even our dentist!–was telling my mother to send us to a school where our brother would be close by for protection. My mother, who had moved to Sudan on her own at age 18, knew we could take care of ourselves.

In preparing our applications, we relied on a 40-page handbook entitled “What to Expect from America.” It wasn’t that helpful. Strange terms like “room and board,” “credits,” and “2-year institution” were used without explanation. Finally, though, both of us gained admission to Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California.

I didn’t prepare much for my new life. I’d seen on TV how American men and women interacted with one another, often with sarcasm. “Friends” had taught me everything, surely. Looking back, though, I probably should have kept reading “What to Expect from America.”

I got into trouble quickly. It was the first day of school, in January 2006, and I was trying to get to my sociology class, which, according to my map, was on the other side of Temple Avenue, a six-lane, two-way roadway. I stood at the curb waiting for a break in traffic and took my chance, running into the street and stopping at the center, waiting for the other side to slow down. This is how we cross the street in Riyadh: we just grab our abayas and run. Everyone knows that traffic lights are of no help.

Unlike in Saudi Arabia, though, drivers in California seemed to be slowing down, even stopping, and staring. A law enforcement officer made his way over to me and asked what I was doing. I explained that I was going to class. He looked at me in silence. “You’re not from here are you?” he asked. Then he helped me to the other side.

I missed my family and my life in Riyadh. While other students were trying to figure out how to use a washing machine or balance their checkbooks, I was attempting to grasp the concept of Fahrenheit and Daylight Savings. But I eventually settled in. It was while impatiently standing in line at the local grocery store that I realized that I felt at home. I’d been on autopilot the whole time.

In October 2008, after nearly three years of living in Los Angeles, my sister and I travelled back to Riyadh to visit our family. As we prepared to leave, a rush of nerves overcame me. I was anxious about all the changes that I knew I’d encounter. My cousins were older, and my friends were in other countries. Nothing was going to be the same.

My mother and a male colleague from her hospital came to pick us up at the airport. (All females entering the country must be received by a male relative or male business colleague.) During the car ride home, my eyes were glued to the window. There were new malls, new freeways, and new city limits. The entire skyline was altered.

After a few weeks, I began to recognize that the changes weren’t just physical. People also behaved differently. Young men and women seemed to be taking more liberties.

Saudi Arabia has always been among the strictest theocracies in the world. Men and women who aren’t immediate relatives must be segregated, and enforcing this statute is the dreaded Muttaween (the religious police, run by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vices).

When I was growing up, young people looked for ways around the Muttaween, but they generally confined their efforts to the home. For instance, someone might plan a get-together in her home and ask her brother to invite the guys over.

Now, however, boys and girls would try to mingle in Riyadh’s new shopping malls. Although the malls officially had one shopping time for singles (men) and another shopping time for family (everyone else), many boys and girls would go into malls with their families and split off to meet one another once they got inside. I even witnessed a few guys disguised as girls in abayas in order to get in during family hours. This was dangerous behavior. One day, when I was shopping with some girlfriends, the entire mall was shut down, and cops and Muttaween began to round up a bunch of kids, throwing them into the back of a large vehicle.

There were also subtler things that caught me off guard. I remember meeting up with some old friends from high school and running into Mr. Alia, a Jordanian who’d been our physics teacher. When I reached out my hand, Mr. Alia politely refused to shake it. He’d become more religious, he said. Then he shook the hands of each of my male classmates.

I eventually returned to Los Angeles to complete my degree at UCLA, to which I’d transferred as a junior. In 2010, I graduated with a Bachelor’s in history.

Over the years, Los Angeles has become my new home. It’s where I graduated from college, got my first real job, and figured out how to go about becoming a human rights lawyer. I’ve made friends who’ve become like family–people who’ve helped me adjust to life in the U.S., who’ve opened up their homes to me, and who’ve celebrated numerous milestones with me.

Legally, though, Los Angeles isn’t home to me anymore than Riyadh is. Staying would require me to have a green card, and demand for those is far greater than supply. Still, I have a chance. Even after thirty years of living in Saudi Arabia, my mother has no chance of staying there.

Needless to say, my circumstances are peculiar. I have two countries, Ethiopia and Eritrea, to which I have legal connections but few emotional ties. And I have two countries, Saudi Arabia and the United States, to which I have immense emotional ties but few legal connections. The question of where I’ll get to settle down won’t be quickly answered. But I take comfort in knowing that others are likewise searching for a permanent home. Some day, I hope, we’ll find it.

Sara Mengesha graduated from UCLA in 2010 with a degree in history. She is currently applying to law schools in hopes of pursuing a career in human rights law.

*Photo courtesy of nada abdalla.

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