Original Story Published by: CGTN Africa, www.africa.cgtn.com
Photo Source: CGTN Africa
(Above) Screenshot from the film “Anbessa” .
Living in a tool shed on the outskirts of Ethiopia’s capital, 10-year-old Asalif Tewold straddles a unique space between modernity and tradition.
In his short life, he has lived on a rural farm and in the shadows of a towering condominium complex – learning how to dodge dangerous hyenas and land developers – as he and his dispossessed family try to find a place to call home.
The young boy and his mother are the subject of the film “Anbessa”, meaning “lion” in Amharic, one of Ethiopia’s main languages, that tracks their displacement off farmland to make way for a block of flats on the fringes of Addis Ababa.
The playful protagonist, Asalif, takes center stage of the documentary by U.S. filmmaker Mo Scarpelli, premiering in London on Wednesday at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival – as he lives and plays in the looming shadow of the buildings.
“Asalif is the perfect person … he lives literally on the rift of old and new,” Scarpelli told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“Anbessa” follows Asalif over two years as he seeks to ward off roaming hyenas both literally in the forest and in the form of lurking land developers.
As he carves out a space to call home, he and millions of others globally are learning that “progress” is not for them, said Scarpelli, as the film analyses universal themes of gentrification and urbanization.
Ethiopia, a nation of 105 million and an economic power in East Africa, is grappling with a housing crisis and new developments are leaving millions like Asalif out of the picture, Scarpelli said.
About 40 percent of Africa’s 1 billion people live in towns and cities and the urban population is expected to double over the next 25 years, the World Bank predicts.
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