(ScreenDaily.COM) BERLIN — Cologne-based The Match Factory will handle international sales on two Venice competition titles – Christian Petzold’s Jerichow and Haile Gerima’s Teza – screening as world premieres at the festival.
Jerichow marks The Match Factory’s second collaboration with Petzold after his Berlinale 2007 competition film Yella which won lead actress and Petzold regular Nina Hoss a Silver Bear.
Based on an original screenplay by Petzold, the new film sees a young man (played by Benno Fuermann in his third film with Petzold after Wolfsburg and Ghosts) returning to his small hometown in Eastern Germany and beginning a passionate love affair with a married woman (Hoss). When her husband (Hilmi Soezer) learns of her unfaithfulness, a perfidious plan triggers off a catastrophe.
While Petzold sees a connection between the previous films Something To Remind Me and Wolfsburg with Jerichow – “in all three, it is about crime, passion and deep emotions, and deadly sins like revenge and greed” – he warns against interpreting these three as forming a trilogy in the same way as was done for The State I Am In, Ghosts, and Yella.
Jerichow will be released theatrically in Germany by Piffl Medien next January.
The Match Factory’s second title is Teza by veteran US-based Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima whose previous films include the portrait of slavery in Sankofa (1993) and the documentary Adwa (1999).
The new feature is described as “a story about hope and disillusionment, foreignness and homeland” following the life a young Ethiopian from his student days in West Germany in the 1970s to his final return to his native village at the age of 60.
Produced by Gerima’s Mypheduh/Negod Gwad with Strasbourg-based Unlimited, Germany’s Pandora Film Produktion and broadcasters WDR/Arte, the film was shot in the Amharic language in Ethiopia and Cologne.
In addition, Pandora Film is a production partner on another Venice world premiere, Claire Denis’s 35 Rhums, in an “out of competition” slot. The co-production with Soudaine Compagnie was shot in Paris and Luebeck last autumn and tells the story of the separation of a widowed father (Alex Decas) from the daughter (Mati Diop) he brought up on his own. Elle Driver is handling international sales on 35 Rhums, not Wild Bunch as previously reported.
Women sell food at a roadside in Addis Ababa
Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN
ADDIS ABABA (IRIN) – The number of people requiring emergency food aid is expected to increase as food security has not improved, according to the latest assessment of drought-affected areas, a senior government official said.
“In general, the findings of the assessment indicated that the overall food security situation in the drought-affected areas has not improved,” Abera Deresa, the minister of agriculture, told reporters in Addis Ababa on 7 August. The assessment was of the regular belg (short rains) season.
Abera said the food security situation had been exacerbated by the country’s dependence on rain-fed agriculture. “Failed rains in the south in October and November during the belg season led to crop failure,” he said.
Parts of Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNPR) are extremely food insecure after minimal rains meant a failed sweet potato harvest in February and a near failure of the current belg harvest, according to a food security outlook for July to December by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net).
In southern and southeastern Ethiopia, including the southern zones of Somali Region, pastoral and agro-pastoral populations remain highly to extremely food-insecure due to successive seasons of below-average rains, flooding in riverine areas, livestock disease, an army worm infestation, conflict, inadequate humanitarian assistance, and extremely high prices of food, stated the FEWS Net report.
Successive poor rains in November and December and later in March and April had led to at least 4.6 million people requiring emergency relief, according to Abera.
The government had launched an appeal for 509,916MT of food and an additional US$38.6 million for non-food needs such as health, nutrition, water, sanitation and agriculture.
Abera said there was still a deficit of 278,000MT of food and $3 million to address the food and non-food requirements.
“We are trying to address the problem with the available resources but we still need donor support,” he said.
Widespread crop failure had led to critical food insecurity, prompting increased migration, according to the July findings of the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Agency (DPPA)-led multi-agency mission.
Although food security is expected to improve in the eastern parts of Tigray, Amhara, and Oromiya region, as well as most of SNNPR from October to December, the average seasonal rains will be insufficient to improve food security for pastoralists in the south and southeast, said FEWS Net.
How many more people required emergency food support would be established after consultation with the regional governments, according to the DPPA Director-General, Simon Mechale.
“We do not have complete information from some of the regional governments yet,” Mechale said.
(Press TV) — Four Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers were killed in heavy clashes with the Union of Islamic Court (UIC) fighters north of the Somali capital Mogadishu.
A Press TV correspondent, reporting from Mogadishu, says the fighting between the Ethiopian Woyanne troops and the UIC fighters is ongoing in the Industrial Street.
According to an eye-witness at least six mortars landed in the Pasta Base in north Mogadishu killing 4 Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers and injuring several others.
In a telephone interview with Press TV the UIC spokesman, Abdirahim Isse Addow, confirmed that the UIC has launched two strong attacks on Somali government troops backed by Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers.
(VOA) — Witnesses in Somalia say Islamist insurgents have seized control of Hudur, the capital of the Bakool region.
The governor of Bakool confirmed to VOA Somali service that he fled Hudur as Islamist fighters entered the town late Thursday.
There was no immediate comment by the Somali government.
The Bakool region borders Ethiopia, which has thousands of troops in Somalia supporting the country’s U.N.-backed administration led by President Abdullahi Yusuf.
Anti-government insurgents have captured provincial towns in recent months only to withdraw after a short time.
New York (Tadias) – The U.S. State of Virginia, which is home to one of the largest Ethiopian American communities in the country, hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in four decades, but some say it might turn Blue come November.
“I really believe for the first time in 44 years that we have a great chance of getting the electoral votes in a blue column for Sen. Obama this Fall,” Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine recently told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
And, if the predictions hold true, the Ethiopian American vote could become the deciding factor in November that would deliver Virginia to the Democrats in a close general election.
“In states like Virginia, Ethiopians are in a unique position to swing the vote”, says Selam Mulugeta, a Field Organizer with Obama for America campaign in Northern Virginia. “If all of us who are eligible to vote do so, then we could potentially win the state.”… Read more >>
