Meseganio Tadela (Debebe Eshetu) prepares for a new life following the death of his wife
RED LEAVES (ALIM ADUMIM) (Bazi Gete, 2014)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
Francesca Beale Theater, 144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam
Friday, May 8, 6:45, and Sunday, May 10, 4:15, $14 ($75 for centerpiece screening and reception on May 8)
Festival runs May 6-12
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.africanfilmny.org
Named Best First Film at the 2014 Jerusalem Film Festival, Bazi Gete’s Red Leaves is a compelling cinema-vérité-style tale of an Ethiopian Jewish family dealing with a very stubborn patriarch following the death of his wife. The film opens as a man tries to lead a goat to slaughter, an apt metaphor for what might become of seventy-four-year-old Meseganio Tadela (Debebe Eshetu), a solemn survivor of Sudan who suddenly tells his family that he has sold his home and will spend the rest of his life living with each of them in Tel Aviv. So he shows up unannounced at one son’s home, then another’s, leaving behind psychological wreckage that might never be undone. A stubborn man of few words, Meseganio is determined to preserve the old traditions in changing times that are quickly passing him by. His adherence gets him into trouble with his children and grandchildren, who have different priorities. Gete and cinematographer Edan Sasson use a handheld camera that puts the viewer at the Shabbat dinner table with the family as they playfully joke around with one another but afterward reveals Meseganio sitting by himself as everyone else goes on about their life without him. He can’t keep from interfering in his children’s lives, and he sticks his nose in various situations that turn volatile, from a confrontation with his granddaughter Bosna (Ruti Asarsai) to battles with his son Baruch’s (Meir Dassa) wife, Zehava (Hanna Haiela), and his other son, Moshe (Solomon Mersha). “Nothing to live for,” Meseganio’s friend Achenaf (Molla Megistu) says, but Meseganio has plenty to live for, if he would only recognize it. The final twenty minutes, and the wholly ambiguous ending, are heartbreaking and painful as the old man tries to find his way.
RED LEAVES follows a Lear-like Ethiopian immigrant stubbornly clinging to the old ways
Gete was inspired by King Lear, Shakespeare’s classic tragedy of an aging old king and his daughters, as well as his own family, who went from Ethiopia to Sudanese refugee camps before moving to Israel when he was a young boy. Eshetu gives a subtly powerful performance as Meseganio, but he gets terrific support from the rest of the cast, all nonactors who play their parts extremely well. Featuring English, Hebrew, and Amharic, Red Leaves might be about the African diaspora, but it tells a story that any immigrant family will relate to. The film is the centerpiece selection of the twenty-second annual New York African Film Festival, screening May 8 at 6:45 and May 10 at 4:15 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Francesca Beale Theater, followed by Q&As with Gete. (Red Leaves will also be shown May 19 at the JCC in Manhattan as part of the twelfth annual Sheba Film Festival.) The NYAFF runs May 6-12 and includes such other films as Carey McKenzie’s opening-night Cold Harbour, Dare Fasasi’s Head Gone, Tala Hadid’s The Narrow Frame of Midnight, followed by a Q&A with Hadid, Danny Glover, Khalid Abdalla, and Adam Shatz, and Philippe Lacôte’s Run, followed by a Q&A with Isaach de Bankolé.