Efrain (2015)

Beginning such as a pastoral story with nice landscapes, mountain view, plain and forest, it’s actual story of Ephraim and his beloved lamb. The movie portrays the innocence of a child, also traditions, hunger, difficult life conditions and a little bit of hope. It makes you feel that Ethiopia, a far away land, is not that distant in fact. It also contains lots of information about Ethiopian culture; their interesting belief mixture for example. As a multi-religious country, they have customs and superstitions similar to those of Muslims, they do prey like Muslims, are blessed with pilgrimage, they as well comomorate Jesus, or have some Buddhists customs. Liked the tiny houses they live in. Among the main characters you see both a grandmother living like Dalai Lama and as well a older sister, being far away from religion, rather secular and believer of positive science, fleeing from her village to live in city. Pretty fun to watch.

It’s I believe the first Ethiopian movie to attract the attention of Cannes and The Academy (was Oscar Nominee) when it was released. Really good effort that this movie was able to cross the borders and got known worldwide, which is always nice to see countries display their cultural elements with movies etc. And enlightens our minds a bit making us curious about what we might miss a bit far away from our surroundings.

Nil Birinci