Cinema Under Fire: Ethiopia

What forces are threatening filmmakers’ freedoms? In a series of contributions from international film critics, Filmkrant reports on the political and economical forces at work on national film production and culture. This month: Ethiopia, a bubbling and youthful film industry in dire need of infrastructure.

Ethiopia’s history with cinema is relatively recent and one filled with gaps in both output and infrastructure that has always been dependent on the active regime.

The first bit of cinema ever introduced into the country was during Emperor Menelik II’s reign, just a few years after the first screening by the Lumière brothers. The cohort that brought this new technology wisely selected a German short film where Jesus walks on water, in fear of the audience objecting to this devilish tech that produces life size images seemingly out of thin air.

A few cinema houses were built in the first half of the twentieth century, but mostly by expats for expats and aristocrats; theater remained the dominant and preferred art form for the local population.

The first documented Ethiopian produced film with fully spoken Amharic dialogue was Who Is Hirut’s Father? from 1965 directed by Greek filmmaker Lambros Jokaris, and written by Ilala Ibsa, an Ethiopian writer and businessman who some sources also credit as the director of the film. Shot on 16mm film, Who Is Hirut’s Father? tells the story of the titular character, a young woman who after some personal trauma succumbs to prostitution before altering her life and enrolling in school. It was made by a loan from Development Bank of Ethiopia, but given the precarity of celluloid filmmaking and the film never making the intended impact at the time the loan was never paid back; there was no emergence of a coordinated film industry in the decades that followed.

Over the last decade, the film has only been screened twice in Ethiopia, and it is in need of a full digital restoration as parts of the film are damaged. This film technically predates what is widely considered the first African film told in an African language (Wolof) which is Ousmane Sembène’s Mandabi (1966).

In the following decades there were only two other locally produced films that are noteworthy: Michael Papatakis’s Gumma (1976) and Solomon Bekele’s Aster (1991). Both films were a product of the first national film institute, Ethiopian Film Center, which mostly made way for propaganda films before later being changed to Ethiopian Film Corporation (and eventually disbanded in 1999).

In the 21st century, there was a boom in Ethiopian film production with the free-market system introduced in the early 90s and the rise of digital video which increased the number of films in theaters and increased the demand among the general public. Comedies and romantic melodrama dominated the screens, and locally produced feature-length films grew from ten per year in the early 2000s to 125 films per year by 2012, according to Addis Ababa’s Culture and Tourism Office.

But Ethiopia’s film industry has virtually no home release system because of rampant piracy; one can find most recent movies on YouTube not long after their theatrical run – a great way for the diaspora to keep up with Ethiopian movies.

Despite increase in film production output, there is still a lack of infrastructure and sustainable support from the government in order for the film industry to reach its domestic potential before competing in foreign markets. Throughout history, previous governments had not considered cinema as a serious economy booster that demands heavy investment.

A lack of reliable directors has made it difficult to follow ongoing trends among filmgoers and filmmakers. Most filmmakers copy whatever worked before without catering to the audience’s desire for new kinds of films. The most popular film of the last two decades is Henok Ayele’s Yewendoch Guday (which roughly translates to Guys’ Affairs), a breakup, battle of the sexes romcom, the popularity of which hasn’t waned since its release in 2007. Although political filmmaking is often popular, these films are few and far between, perhaps owing to censorship throughout different governments.

Whenever Ethiopian cinema is mentioned internationally, most people point to the works of Haile Gerima, a US based Ethiopian independent filmmaker who came out of the L.A. Rebellion movement along with the likes of Charles Burnett. Known for his uncompromising vision, Gerima often centers his stories on systemic injustices, whether the story is set in the States, Ghana or Ethiopia. Teza (2008) was his last feature film which had a short theatrical run in Ethiopia, and in the film Gerima tackles the rarely talked about Derg, the dark history of Ethiopia’s communist regime (1974-1991), through the eyes of a diaspora’s homecoming. It won best screenplay and special jury prize at the 65th Venice Film Festival.

For most Ethiopians, Teza is the high watermark of Ethiopian cinema that is talked about to this day, and Gerima himself is revered in the country, even among people who don’t watch films, for his outspoken views about Ethiopia’s history, past and present. One of his earliest films, the underseen Harvest 3000 Years (1976) also had a backdrop of the exploitative landlord-tenant relationship under the urban land tenure system during Emperor Haile Selassie’s reign, a system by which land was exclusively granted to nobilities, chiefs, and other government affiliates.

But while Gerima’s films are mostly set in Ethiopia, his filmography is hardly indicative of Ethiopian filmmaking practices and realities. So what of the contemporary filmmakers and the current state of the film industry?

The median age in Ethiopia is 19. From that very young population, who have limited academic prospects due to the failure of the education system in recent years, a new wave of young artists is arising, striving to find their voices in the modern world. With increasingly better and more accessible film equipment (smaller DSLR cameras), there are a growing number of DIY filmmakers and storytellers who are prioritizing the need to tell the story over uncertain commerce.

Over the past fifteen years, dozens of Ethiopian shorts and a handful of features have screened in international film festivals. In 2015, Yared Zeleke’s Lamb became the first Ethiopian film in the Cannes Official Selection, in the Un Certain Regard competition (although Haile Gerima’s Harvest 3000 Years did grace the Croisette in 1975 in the Directors’ Fortnight). Jessica Beshir’s much acclaimed Faya dayi (2021), a hypnotic documentary about the social interactions around the addictive stimulant leaf called khat, became the first Ethiopian film released as part of the Criterion Collection.

There are plenty of recent shorts that have made a splash in the international scene, namely Beza Hailu Lemma’s Alazar which played at Critics Week at Cannes 2024. There are now independent African focused distribution houses (like Sudu Connection), and opportunities for co-productions from different countries which have rejuvenated the filmmaking industry.

But despite all this, there is virtually no government funding for feature films. If that was on the table the possibilities seem boundless, as there is no shortage of talent in the country. There needs to also be an incentive for foreign film productions to make use of Ethiopia’s diverse landscapes. In the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems, the opening of the film is set in the Etheopian territory of Welo, but as the filmmakers stated they were forced to shoot in South Africa because Ethiopia was uninsurable for their funders.

As for audiences, they have always been ready, which is evident if one goes to any evening screening at Addis Abeba’s Alem Cinema for the latest Ethiopian movie: there are queues upon queues of eager cinephiles. With an increasing number of private cinemas since the mid 2000s, there is a reliable domestic market despite limited releases every year. As of 2025, Videobet, the first repertory cinema house in Ethiopia that myself and Beza Hailu Lemma co-founded, has been screening international classics, to further develop a robust film community; the current programming is a two-month retrospective of the renowned Iranian filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami.

Cinema is an essential force that can transform people, and the new cinematic voices in Ethiopia have a sort of clean slate to create a new cinematic language of their own making.

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Born and raised in Addis Ababa, Bandamlak Y. Jemberie is a freelance film critic and co-founder of Videobet, the first repertory cinema in Ethiopia. An alum of Locarno Critics Academy 2025, his work has been published in outlets such as Variety and Swiss Info.