The history of humankind is a history of change. Over the centuries, our cities expanded, then shrank or collapsed. The lines defining the places we inhabit have always been drawn and redrawn. And the price paid for everything we built or have achieved can always be calculated in human lives and the sacrifices people have made. Some have had more influence over such changes than others, yet, over time, both the powerless and those in power have had to surf the waves of macro changes set in motion by a combination of elements that often cannot be pinned down and described in simple causalities.
As such, the #urbanisation happening now in many places on the African continent is an example of a large wave of change set in motion globally. It is one that can be explained but not pinned down in simple terms. Yet, if one thing can be looked at it is the immediate separation between those benefiting from this urbanisation and the countless faceless people whose lives are ripped apart in the process. These lives sometimes get to be rebuilt, though often not. But for sure, the new architecture of the cities impacts the emotional architecture of these people for good. Daniel Kötter’s new film, Rift Finfinnee captures this, setting the lens on the faceless, building a macro portrait made of individual hearts living in the shifting natural and social landscapes at the outskirts of #Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa – as the city expands and grows impassively, turning into something new.
City poetry
It would be hard to imagine that poetry can be found in the drama around major changes the expansion of cities brings. Kötter, however, finds it using a well-curated set of cinematic tools to showcase, in visual layers, the complicated macro story that unfolds. The film has no distinct characters, but for a few faces captured in the atmospheric landscape of the city’s outskirts and villages, that it quickly swallows up.
There are the farmers, whose land is being half-forcefully bought and, in the process, whose communities fall apart. Many become the workers that labour to build the new city, day in and day out. There are the small business owners who make a meager living at the margins of this newly created micro-economy in not yet inhabited neighbourhoods. Many of these become the inhabitants of the artificially created and soulless temporary flats built for relocation by the government.
The history of humankind is a history of change.
And then there is the sum of them, a faceless sacrifice society they all form.
Kötter layers voiceover stories with micro and macro shots of these new landscapes in the making. The camera, often standing still, turning 180 degrees to capture not only the atmosphere and the aesthetics of the place, but also to convey just how small each human being is. Each one of them has a story, each story centered on the earthquake these developments mean to their individual circumstances and life. Waved in this mix, what surfaces is a socio-geographic portrait of what Addis Ababa and its surroundings are like now, the slow-burning remains of a past of ethnic conflicts, and a present of uncertainty.
The film could be mistakenly seen as simple, yet it is anything but. At every twist, it feels like something major is about to happen. And something major is happening. The depth of it accessible only by taking on the journey from the beginning to the end.
The sum of its parts
With its slow-paced anti-climax build-up, this documentary touches on something deep and #existential. Its core is giving depth and representation to everyone touched by the impact of urbanisation – one large sophisticated portrait, which, should it be put in the descriptive words of causalities, would fail to convey the emotional strength of the sum of its parts. It is this strength that Kötter brings to life. Paradoxically, by not giving full identity to the people presented or focusing on a sum of complex characters, the result is the coming to life of an entire group of people’s reality – the ones who have no say in things, and that eventually will be forgotten.
There is a sense of fatality in these realities. And there is something tactile in the way the landscapes are seen on screen. There is an invisible might in this omnipresent wave of change that brings #displacement. We see it in the dynamic of everyday life, hearing the sounds of destruction and construction as the soundtrack to it all, moving around in an effortless slide along the many layers of this reality. Through this, the viewer gets to feel more than to think about what life is like and gets to question would be like if they just happened to be born and live their lives in this place, at this time.
With its slow-paced anti-climax build-up, this documentary touches on something deep and existential.
The universality of a life
In many ways, this sense of context – that one can just find themselves in by chance – is part of the universal condition of human life, and brings an unmediated, immediate kind of empathy and understanding. Perhaps we happen to live in a place where laws protect us better and that means we are lucky. But to some degree, our lives are also part of large dynamics we don’ get to influence or have a say in. This realisation is perhaps one of the most important take-aways of Rift Finfinnee. Through this film, Kötter turns one particular place on earth into a symbol of just that.
Rift Finfinnee screened as part ofHi.hlava International Documentary Film Festival’s «Opus Bonum», DOK Leipzig German Competition & doclisboa second session: «Movements» (5 – 11 November) programmes.
