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The movie starts showing a mother, Amen, (Saba
Fridaweke) begging Tesfaye, (Getnet Worku) playing a
good father, to be a guardian of her young boy Nati,
played by Yafet Girum. She explains that if he stays
for one more day with her his uncle Girma (Girum
Tesfaye) – producer of the film – would kill him.
You might be wondering how an uncle could kill a
little boy. Well, the movie does leave you
wondering, till the end; for an hour and a half you
have to think hard to unravel.
The mother, Amen, wakes up from a nightmare of
somebody hurting and taking Nati away from her. It
was a bit hard to figure it out.
Are the two – the nightmare and the real life
conversation between Amen and Tesfaye – connected?
Or was Amen’s asking Tesfaye a nightmare too?
More questions followed afterwards.
The next scene took one to Meseret, played by
Haimanot Debebe, and her daughter Melat, played by
Fireselam Emiru, both getting ready to go out.
Having the mother-child attachment, they hug and
kiss while Melat asks about her father and the
status of his relationship with her mother. She
demands an explanation as to why her mother and
father do not to live together. However, an
irritated reply comes from Meseret, telling her
child not to ever mention her father’s name again.
Then, the mother runs up to her bedroom, looking a
bit sad about their conversation, and calls someone,
with inaudible conversations on both sides of the
line; the child listens to them from the phone in
the living room. When Meseret realizes that her
daughter is listening in on the dialogue, she goes
to the living room, goes back to the bedroom and
makes a call again, telling someone, unidentified at
that moment, that she would go to where the person
is. Melat, hiding somewhere in the house, comes out
looking very shocked by what she has heard.
Puzzled from the beginning, one tried to figure out
the connection between the two scenes.
Following this, Meseret goes to the place she said
she would, that is Henok’s (Chirotaw Kelkay) place,
where she finds out that someone else - Tekle,
played by Mesfin Ayifokru - is threatening to kill
both of them.
Leaving her tied up to a chair, Henok and Tekle
leave; the latter warned her about the money she
should have paid him in order to get a visa to go
out of the country. Henok pretends to be hurt in
front of her, just to achieve his financial target.
This is also another question the end of the movie
tries to answer.
Full of night scenes and dim lights, the movie
leaves you nervous in some instances, like when the
10-year old Nati follows Henok and Tekle as they
take Meseret tied up with her hands behind her back,
her eyes covered and still screaming.
He follows them, on his bike, to the house they take
her to. He takes picture of every move. Getting his
hands into their car through an open left window, he
takes Meseret’s ID from her purse and phones her
daughter, telling her that her mother is in deep
trouble.
This 10 year old boy helps Meseret get rescued. The
police thank Nati for his cooperation. But that was
it; the police chief (Melke Mesfin, a former
policeman) thanked him, and left him to go to his
boarding school all by himself yet it was almost
evening.
Rationally speaking, the police should have taken
him to wherever he was going; or at least let the
audience think they did.
In addition, this all happened while Nati’s uncle
was following up on him to make his move to keep his
promise of killing the boy. His uncle always thought
that Nati was the reason his father had died.
Nati is always being chased by his uncle throughout
the movie. The extraordinarily smart kid is always,
though sometimes by miracle, safe from his uncle’s
gun.
He is fast, quick and intelligent. While his
classmates are asked to bring a dictionary to class,
he is not. He spells correctly and he is able to
give definitions.
For instance, his teacher asks him for a series of
definitions and spellings. He answers them all
correctly. Flattered by his performance, the teacher
exclaims “Bravo!” which Nati ends up spelling out
too.
Though the bright kid does not know his mother, he
is familiar with his guardian, who in the end tells
him about his mother and takes him to her. After
spending so much time in sorrow and regret for
having given her kid up, she accepts him with the
promise that she will never let him go again.
However, by that time, Nati has already been granted
a scholarship and goes abroad.
The next scene is 15 years after.
While you would expect age changes old looking
people, this is only the case with Nati and Henok.
Nati returns to Ethiopia to get married to a girl he
grew up with. His mother, still looking young, is
getting him ready for his big day. The courage of
the young Nati is not seen in the older Nati, played
by Yohannes Tesfaye.
Even after 15 years, his uncle has not given up on
his mission; he comes to Amen’s very house to fulfil
his promise. After all, a promise is a promise.
But he has to go past Henok, who in the end happens
to be his father.
Henok describes the whole story here. His father, of
course, died of anger, but not of Nati being born.
He was ashamed of cheating on his wife, having a
child from another woman, and leaving Henok and
Amen, Nati’s parents being sister and brother.
To the uncle’s surprise, Amen is his half sister, as
he is Henok’s brother.
Now the whole picture fits in together, Henok’s
father could not take the blame of cheating on his
wife and not stopping Amen and Henok from getting
married.
Henok leaves Amen without telling her the truth.
So the movie has a lived-happily-ever-after ending,
as Henok, Nati and the uncle hug each other.
Most of the scenes are shot during the night time or
in a darker environment which sometimes made
identifying the actors rather difficult. Even though
the coordinators blame the poor quality of the
projector they rented and promise that the light
system will be better with standard projectors with
no defect, it was not good enough for a premiere, by
which movie makers have to impress people and
promote the movie. There are also some irritating
sounds in the sound effects and a ringing phone.
“The sound variation came as we tried to accommodate
the interest of some of the audience at the back
seats who said could not hear the dialogue clearly;
and again we have to lower the volume when those in
the front seats told us it was to high,” the
director told Fortune, explaining how the
technical defects have come. “The light is a problem
due to the projector we brought; I believe we
produced a good movie.”
Overall, the movie takes you into the story, even
though hard to tie together sometimes, with a bit of
confusion. You have to remain with questions in your
mind to finish the puzzle.
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