Ethiopia’s proud native director
Filmmaker Yared Zeleke discusses the many challenges that filming ‘Lamb’ in his homeland presented.
It is a vision of Ethiopia that the average American might not expect: craggy emerald peaks, picturesque villages, a priest blessing a family for a festive religious celebration. Director Yared Zeleke’s debut feature “Lamb,” about a young boy named Ephraïm who must live with faraway family members after the death of his mother, paints a nuanced portrait of a place that Western media often reduce to headlines about famine and conflict.
“Lamb,” which was chosen as Ethiopia’s Academy Awards submission for foreign language film, didn’t make the Oscars’ shortlist, but it has generated considerable buzz for its 37-yearold writer-director. In November, Variety named Zeleke one of its “10 Screenwriters to Watch.” “Lamb” was the first Ethiopian film to be part of the official selection at Cannes and has screened at festivals in Toronto and Milan (where it won the award for feature film).
This week, the Ethiopian-born Zeleke, who divides his time between New York and Addis Ababa, is at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, where he talked about the challenges of filming “Lamb” and the personal story that inspired the film’s narrative.
Is it true that “Lamb” is drawn from your own migration experiences?
The film was a way to heal my wounds, of having to leave my family at the age of 10. My father, he was imprisoned by the Derg regime [the communist military regime that was in power from 1974 to 1987] when I was very young. My mother remarried. So I was raised by my grandmother. My father, after he was imprisoned, he escaped to Japan — then he made it here [to the United States]. He brought me here. But I didn’t know him. He was a stranger. It was a huge disturbance for me. In the film, I wanted to address how a child deals with loss and grief — but with some humor at its heart.
You’ve said that casting was difficult since Ethiopia doesn’t have a film culture.
Ethiopians can be afraid of the camera because they know the country doesn’t have a good image abroad because of the famine and the poverty. When we hosted castings in Addis Ababa, not a lot of people would come.
So we basically went to theaters and children’s theaters. Ethiopia has an ancient culture of theater — some of it is very good, but it doesn’t get out because it’s all in Amharic. We walked the streets. We went to public schools. For the villagers, we went to the locations we shot in and cast people there.
That was tricky too, because you find someone, and then who will take over their cows while they’re shooting? For your first feature, you could have very easily gone and shot a film about Ethiopian immigrants in Washington, D.C., which would have made the logistics far easier. Why was it so important to shoot in Ethiopia?
Films about Ethiopia are generally not shot in Ethiopia. Angelina Jolie’s “Beyond Borders” was shot in Namibia. There’s an Israeli film, “Live and Become” shot in Israel. In Ethiopia, we don’t have desert like that. Therein lies the problem. You’re watching a film about Ethiopia, but you’re not looking at the country itself. There’s nothing wrong with the desert. But it connotes a certain emptiness, and that is not Ethiopia.
And I wanted to do it in Ethiopia because it was my home. Despite the dictatorship and war and famine and poverty — I had even grown up in a slum — I still feel I had a fairy-tale childhood. There was a lot of love and good food and colorful characters and incredible Christian festivities that I’d grown up with. In Ethiopia, there is no colonial legacy. The culture is untouched. It’s a dream for a filmmaker and storyteller. Beauty and heartache, it’s there.
What types of films did you watch as a boy in Ethiopia?
In Ethiopia, it was under communism, so we were watching a lot of East German television and Russian television and a lot of Bollywood. I think the government thought [Bollywood] was safer than Hollywood. Though there was the occasional James Bond film.
But I loved Bollywood. I can’t name the films I saw as a kid, but living in such a repressive regime, it seemed like Indians were always having a good time. In Ethiopia, we lived with a curfew. And in the Bollywood films everything seemed so fun and free and beautiful.
What were you drawn to when you moved to the U.S.?
I was into indie film. “My Own Private Idaho” was this combination of honesty and dreaminess that I’m still really into. I was really into “Six Degrees of Separation,” which Will Smith was in. I was like in eighth grade when I saw it.
What are you working on?
The working title is “1991.” That’s the year communism ended and [Ethiopia] had democracy. Kids born from that era on are totally from another world. They’re much more educated and much more worldly. I want to deal with the frustration and angst of Ethiopian youths that take on dangerous journeys for a better life across the desert to Arabia, across the sea to Europe and across the jungle to South Africa. That is the story I want to tell.