Anbessa, a documentary feature from Ethiopia, is a poignant film that weaves magic realism through the chaotic charm of childhood curiosity. This film, directed by American director Mo Scarpelli, was released in 2019, and I purposefully avoided googling it because I wanted to see it completely unaided. The only thing I knew about it was a picture of a young boy roaring out of his blue hoodie that I had seen a few times on the Instagram page and the glass door of Unseen Cinema. Like Supa Modo before it, or The Florida Project, I’m constantly drawn to movie posters with children at the centre. Adults, even the best of actors, animate their emotions rather mechanically, but kids have a raw innocence in their eyes that stirs a curiosity inside me, the same curiosity people say the smile of Monalisa invokes. And especially when I have no idea what the movie is about. Luckily for me, I got a chance to see this film in the cinema for what I hope will not be its last run.
Having no idea it was a documentary, the pace of the first scenes felt off, with a lot of narrative space left unused as the shaky camera followed our young protagonist, Asalif Tewold, as he embarked on his rather frivolous escapades through the open fields of forests and apartment condos. The dialogue felt lacking in plot structure, and every other person couldn’t help but give a quick glance at the camera. Everything was setting up for this to be another badly made African film, which I would pity for wasting potential.
Yet somehow, along the way, whether it was the realisation that this boy, like in all the cartoons I’ve known, will probably only wear one set of clothes, or whether it was the moment he heard the howls of a hyena deep into the night and decided to go have a look with his torch. At some point, I forgot to look for the inconsistencies and started seeing the truth in every action.
Halfway through, it occurred to me that I had never seen, heard, or experienced anything Ethiopian. I am unfamiliar with their culture, language, religion, politics, or even much of their popular culture. The vast, beautiful landscapes were just as much of a surprise as the faces of the people. I found so many similarities and differences to our life here in Kenya within the eighty-something minute span, details that I am almost certain I would be oblivious to, my entire life. The themes the film was trying to highlight, those of the pains of poverty and the powerlessness it festers, those of insecurities both in the wild and among the people we share a language with, and those of the benefits and ills of modern technology. All these seem to be things imbued into the fabric of the African spirit, regardless of nation or tribe. Things that seem to find their way into this story, be it by choice or coincidence.
Yet Anbessa is not about any of that. No, this is a film through the eyes of a boy who knows nothing more than to be a boy. A boy who interprets the world around him through songs and stories he learned from his mother, who spends nights with him gazing at the sky, a boy who understands the gravity of being relocated from their home to make way for high-rise buildings but scavenges around them to satisfy his desire to create and innovate. A boy who seems more comfortable in the company of drunkards as they share their tales and complaints than in the midst of his peers. A boy who, despite how much the world seems to have taken from him, reaches within himself to turn himself into a lion to weather it all. But most importantly, a boy who has a stringed pigeon as a pet.
As a narrative piece, it falls short in the areas I’ve mentioned before, but as a documentary, those same areas bring a depth and solemnity that only a normally mundane life could offer. The realisation that the same magical sparks that light what is a rather pointless narrative enough to be entertaining, happen every day to other children in Ethiopia and Africa in general, sequestered and outside our entertainment, is rather chilling. As a kid, I remember making helicopters from motors, devising electric wiring from discarded batteries, climbing trees, fighting other kids for dumb insults, and all the other things that felt childish at the time. It’s films like this that remind me that if all that was done in front of a camera, even the most unremarkable of days would feel like an adventure for the world.
Furthermore, all of this is happening through the lens of an accomplished director, who appears hell-bent on telling the entire story through the eyes of a child. With pensive dream sequences and deliberate moments of nothingness, by the end, even the drawbacks of the film feel like an intentional choice to avoid the voices of adults from diluting what is, and end up being, the story of Abu, the Ethiopian Anbessa.
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