The neorealist drama Difret is an old-fashioned message picture about the Ethiopian practice of abducting child-brides. 14-year old Hirut (Tizita Hagere) lives a few hours from the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. Her teacher recommends that she be promoted to fifth grade and on the way home with this happy news, she walks through what seems like a peaceful landscape. But as the score turns from playful thumb-piano and strings to ominous percussion, a group of men on horseback surround and kidnap her. Beaten and raped, Hirut attempts to escape her captors and in the process shoots and kills the man who had taken her to be his wife.
The film opens in the modest law offices of the Andenet Women Lawyers Association, where Meaza (Meron Getnet) takes pro bono cases to defend Ethiopian women. As she meets her first client, a woman who’s been beaten by her husband, the camera awkwardly pans around the office walls and briefly lights on a poster that raises awareness of battered women. When Meaza hears of Hirut’s case, she signs on as the girl’s lawyer and prepares the case that the would-be child bride acted out of self-defense.
This is the feature film debut from director Zeresenay Mehari, who also wrote and produced, and it’s clearly a labor of love. With Angelina Jolie serving as Executive Producer, the film will raise worldwide awareness of the plight of women in Ethiopia. But it goes through fairly predictable and sometimes awkward paces as Meaza runs into interference from both officials in Addis Ababa and from members of Hirut’s tribe.
At times, the script seems unfinished, as in a scene where Hirut, alarmed by a ringing phone in Meaza’s apartment, runs off into the streets of Addis Ababa. The girl is in danger from men who want her killed and the local police are unable or unwilling to protect her, but the crisis is resolved abruptly. The film remains watchable largely thanks to a natural, sympathetic performance from Getnet, a playwright and poet. But the rest of the cast is less compelling, and the movie’s well-meaning message is dampened by stiff, expository dialogue, and cinematographer Monika Lenczewska’s inconsistent camerawork. She effectively stages Hirut’s abduction as the invasion of an open, natural landscape, but interiors shots are often marred by shaky handheld work that, while intimate, seems deliberately sloppy in a way that undercuts the gravity of the subject at hand.
Difret (“courage” in Amharic) is based on the 1997 case of Aberash Bekele, a 14-year old who killed the man who abducted her to be his bride. But the inspiration for the film feels exploitative. Now 32, Bekele has never been able to return to her village, but fears for her family’s life in the wake of the film. She won an injunction that prevents the film from being shown in Ethiopia. At one point in the film, it is suggested that Meaza is using Hirut’s case for her own glory. Could this be true of the filmmakers as well? In a recent interview with Time, Bekele notes that her case proved only a temporary reprieve from the practice of abducting child brides. “We’re just now seeing abduction come back again.” Difret is heavy-handed cinema and conflicted advocacy for a cause that deserves better.