30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

Italian premiere

In the village of Megendi, in the mountains of Ethiopia, health personnel try to persuade women to go to the clinic to give birth. Infant mortality is high due to home births. But how to overcome the resistance of women? And how to get to the clinic if there are no means of transport? Twenty-five-year-old Hulu decides to give birth at home, with the help of the local elderly midwife who tells of her love for her work and her refusal to practice female circumcision, still very frequent in those lands. A theme that even the girls, in the hairdresser's salon, talk about freely, as they joke about sex, divorces and about men who seem to be relegated to the role of extras. But among them they also share their fears and desires, gestures of solidarity, rebellion and resistance. The directors approach these intimate stories with great delicacy and capture a portrait of rural Africa where the debate between tradition and modernity is very lively.

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  Sarah Noa Bozenhardt

  Born in Freiburg and raised in Ethiopia, she graduated in film, video and media from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, winning various awards for her documentary-thesis, Medanit. In 2016 she began studying documentary direction at the Konrad Wolf Film University of Babelsberg in Potsdam, filming Among us Women in 2021.

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  Daniel Abate Tilahun

  Born in the Ethiopian village of Megendi, he studied at the Blue Nile Film and Television Academy in Addis Abeba. He collaborated with the director and his childhood friend Sarah Noa Bozenhardt in the film Medanit, and subsequently on the research and realization of  Among Us Women, a project that lasted more than five years.