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Cinema Africa: Yared Zeleke On Making ‘Lamb’, The First Ethiopian Official Selection At Cannes

Cinema Africa: Yared Zeleke On Making ‘Lamb’, The First Ethiopian Official Selection At Cannes

Yared Zele, the director of Lamb – ©Adrian O. Smith In the first installment of Okayafrica’s new Cinema Africa series, Neyat Yohannes sits down with ‘Lamb’ director Yared Zeleke, whose debut feature became Ethiopia’s first-ever Official Selection at Cannes. Yared Zeleke is the Addis Ababa-born director responsible for the very first Ethiopian film to be an Official Selection at Cannes Film Festival in its entire 68-year run.
His debut feature film, Lamb was screened in the Un Certain Regard category for 2015. It follows a boy on a quest to reunite with his father and to save his beloved copper-colored ewe from being slaughtered. With the lush backdrop of the fecund Northern Ethiopian hillsides and seemingly simple stories that unfurl to expose nuanced narratives, Lamb reveals a side of Ethiopia not often seen by the rest of the world. Zeleke has been busy globetrotting for festival season, but he took a break to talk to Okayafrica about his critically acclaimed film.
Neyat Yohannes for Okayafrica: How did you decide on Lamb for your first major project?
Yared Zeleke: Basically, it’s my childhood. I left Ethiopia at age ten and despite the war and the famine and the political chaos going on at the time, I had a fairytale of a childhood growing up near Merkato in Addis Ababa. My family and community protected us kids from the horrors of the time, so all I remember is so much good food and affection and colorful personalities and the holiday festivities. I just left behind this really happy childhood for a so-called better life in the U.S. At age ten, I left by myself, on a plane, to go meet the father I didn’t know who was in the U.S. at the time and had escaped Derg. That was the end of my childhood; I left behind everyone I knew and loved. I carried that with me all these years, and so, when I decided to do a story about a boy who’s lost his family and is living in a new hostile environment, the theme is very much my life story—even though I never grew up on a farm and I don’t cook or anything like that. Lamb doesn’t spend time explaining Ethiopian customs. It just drops viewers into the mix to observe and comprehend for themselves. Was this intentional? Well, you know, that’s interesting. I wouldn’t say that it’s […]

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