+ Q+A afterwards with director Daniel Kötter
Three important German film festivals are guests in Brussels every year: the Berlinale Forum, DOK Leipzig and Duisburger Filmwoche. From the DOK Leipzig programme 2020, we’re presenting Rift Finfinnee by Daniel Kötter this year. Following the Belgian premiere, the director will be available for a film discussion with Ralph Eue, head of the DOK Leipzig selection committee.
About the film: Rift Finfinnee
(Ethiopia, Germany, 2020; languages: Amharic, Oromo; subtitles: English; 79’)
The film
Rift Finfinnee takes the audience on a journey through the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa (in Oromo: Finfinnee) using rigidly composed shots and an intricately interwoven original soundtrack. It uses the specific geography, architecture and everyday life of individual agricultural and construction workers in the eastern suburbs of Addis Ababa as a starting point for an allegorical tale about the urbanisation of African societies on the fringes of the civil war.
The film documents the rural-urban transformation of space and its impact on coexistence using the example of four districts in the eastern part of the Ethiopian capital: the backdrop to far-reaching social change in Ethiopia – all four areas are within sight of one another but are separated by the gorge of the Akaki river – a deep divide which splits the urban from the non-urban, the present from the planned future and Oromo from Amhara.
Rift Finfinnee is part of a documentary film trilogy – together with
Hashti Tehran (2017, 60 min.) and
Desert View (2018, 84 min.) – about the suburbs of Teheran, Cairo and Addis Ababa.
Hashti Tehran won the German Short Film Prize’s Special Award, while
Rift Finfinnee was awarded the DEFA Prize at DOK Leipzig.
About the director: Daniel Kötter
Daniel Kötter is an international filmmaker and musical theatre director. His work shifts between various media and institutional contexts and combines the techniques of experimental filmmaking with performative and documentary elements. Visual research continually leads him to Africa and the Middle East. Daniel Kötter is currently working on a series of spatial performances and 360° films entitled landscapes and bodies about the agricultural and social consequences of extractivism in Germany, West Papua, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Estonia.
“PERSPEKTIVEN – Berlinale Forum, DOK Leipzig, Duisburger Filmwoche“ is an initiative by Goethe-Institut Brussels and BOZAR Films, programmed with Le p'tit ciné asbl, in cooperation with the Berlinale Forum, Arsenal – Institute for Film und Video Art, DOK Leipzig and Duisburger Filmwoche. The series is kindly supported by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
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