Film - Fatuma and Asya: Two Afar Girls in Ethiopia

Director Francesco Sincich

The Society is screening the film Fatuma and Asya: Two Afar Girls in Ethiopia (Fatuma kee Asya. Etiopia Qafarih sayyoh nammayih mano). The film was shown at the 14th Royal Anthropological Institute's International Festival of Ethnographic Film in Bristol in June 2015.

Two young Afar girls, Fatuma (10) and Asya (13), show us their daily life in two different contexts of the Afar Region in Ethiopia. Both of them face hard challenges: finding an alternative way to the mandatory arranged marriage (absuma) without breaking the Afar tradition for Fatuma, and the conflict with the Somali Issa and the livestock's and land's theft for Asya. Both of them will find the solutions: Fatuma will marry her boyfriend and Asya's family will recover the stolen cattle thanks to the fi'ma, the traditional Afar militia.

The film was directed by Francesco Sincich and final production took place in Italy in 2014. The film is 59 minutes long and has English subtitles.

The money required for making the film, less than £2000, was raised via Ulele, a European crowdfunding website, the working title for the film being Tolé.

Francesco Sincich used Ulele to successfully raise funds for a second film, Dahra, and in his pitch he describes some of the experiences he had making Fatuma and Asya.

The film will be introduced by Angela Raven-Roberts, who has a very good understanding of the Horn of Africa and the challenges of its pastoral community due to her decades-long involvement with local communities and her past development work for multiple governments and NGOs. There will be a Q&A session at the end of the screening.

The Anglo-Ethiopian Society is affiliated to the University of London’s Centre of African Studies (CAS) and all of our events at SOAS are co-hosted with CAS.