Difret producer and director at the 2015 Athena Film Festival
This is a guest post by Paula Schwartz.
Angelina Jolie executive produced Difret, a drama based on the true story of a 14-year-old Ethiopian girl, Hirut, who is kidnapped in her rural village by a much older man and kept captive as his future bride. When Hirut, played beautifully by Tizita Hagere, fights back and accidentally kills her captor, she faces the death sentence, as dictated by tribal law.
The abduction of young girls by much older men who make them their wives is a cultural tradition in rural villages in this part of the world, as is the death penalty for Hirut’s so-called crime. But a tough, steely lawyer, Maeza (Meron Getnet), from the women’s legal aide practice takes on the case and fights for her client’s life. The movie also works well as a thriller and procedural courtroom drama with twists and heart-pounding reversals. That the story is based on a riveting true story gives the movie a timeliness and urgency that makes it understandable why Jolie, who directed In the Land of Blood and Honey, about the plight of women abused and raped during the Bosnian War, has attached her name and support to the film.
Difret is written and directed by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, who was born in Ethiopia, but raised in Virginia, and is produced by Mehret Mandefro. The two married while shooting the film in Ethiopia. Difret closed the Athena Film Festival in February, and the director and producer brought along their two-year-old son and seven-week baby to the screening and Q&A moderated by Athena Film Festival co-founder Melissa Silverstein.
Following are selected highlights from the Q&A.
How did you get the movie made?
Mehret Mandefro: I’ve been working on it for over five years. I joined this project in 2009 … I started this project in 2007 technically. Zeresenay is a classically trained filmmaker and went to film school. I’m actually very non-traditional in my background. I’m a physician by training … I came to film through the back door. And about five years ago, I was speaking at a health and human rights conference, and Zeresenay was pitching his script to some NGOs.
He had exhausted his possibilities in Hollywood. The script was actually incredibly strong, so people had offered to buy it in Hollywood, but they wanted it done in English. They also wanted Hollywood actors, and Zeresenay had a very specific vision of the film to do it in Addis Ababa, cast it locally, which meant it took longer. But thankfully, when he brought it to me, I read the script, and it was such a page turner, and I was already very interested working on kind of women’s issues that I was like, “Oh, I know how to raise money for this. We’re going to do it.” So I actually started. I was producing the film before I married him, before we had babies and all that, so we joke that we had twins actually … I was pregnant with Lucas when we went into production, and Mena came along this year.
Difret producer and director at the 2015 Athena Film Festival
What was the inspiration for this script?
Z: By chance really. I met Meaza Ashenafi by chance … In 2005, I was in Ethiopia working on a documentary, and I was at a friend’s house, and her brother said, “You should make a film about my sister.” Like yeah, sure, why not? I didn’t know who she was and didn’t know about that organization that she started. By the time I met her, she’d helped more than 30,000 people, women and children … She was a judge and left her seat because she thought that the country was ready to move forward in human rights, so she started working with the constitution commission … From a filmmaker’s standpoint, that is a very interesting character, and you can already imagine what kind of difficulties that she’s going to face, so I was already locked in on that and then started reading about the organization, and it was amazing, so I found this story, and I left home in May 1996 to go to school, and this particular case happened literally four or five months after I left.
And it was also the organization’s biggest case then or since, and it kind of put the organization on the map, but it also was the first time that the country as a whole had a conversation about tradition, and that was my entry point. Another very strong subject matter to tackle is this tradition. My true point is always the characters and the struggles that they face.
Shooting in Ethiopia must have been intense, especially since you shot in some of the rural villages. Describe shooting some of those scenes.
Z: When we were doing the abduction scene with the horses, we rented the horses from the village and we had particular riders because we wanted to do it in a certain way, and also, there were insurance issues, and we didn’t want to be liable, and then so they went, “You guys are doing it wrong.” So they literally wanted to get all the guys, the professional riders that we brought from the city to ride the horses, and they wanted to show us themselves how it’s done.
So they showed you how they abduct girls?
Z: Right. See you have to understand because in their context, in that traditional context, it’s not something that’s bad. It is part of life. It happens there, and so it’s part of who they are.
How did you find your female leads? The little girl never acted before, so how did you guide her through the most emotional scenes?
Z: The lawyer, played by Meron Getnet, is a classically trained actor and had been in 10 or 11 movies before we got her, and she had two or three television shows and was taking her masters in theater … With Tizita Hagere, we got lucky. Two weeks before we shot, we had almost given up, and we weren’t going to shoot at all if we didn’t have the right person to play her because she is the core of the film. She has the emotional trigger that goes on through the film, and so, it’s too much to ask for a young person to play that, right? So you kind of have to find that person already born with those elements. She was 13 when we cast her. And I knew that I didn’t want to overwhelm her, so I didn’t give her the script. So we started working on a daily basis. And I would tell her exactly what happened for that scene. And so I’d tell her what happened before it, and then what’s going to happen after. So we would have a conversation, not about her, but about the character, Hirut. That is a real person. So she kind of felt like she got to know her as a friend, so she always talked about the part as a third person, so it’s not about her. She’s actually emulating somebody else’s story, which helped us because you can see when you talk to her. Most of the takes were first or second takes.
How did Angelina Jolie happen to become an executive producer for the film?
M: After really working hard to try and raise the money, we actually had the finishing cut and it was a month before we were going to premiere it at Sundance. And you know we were sitting there, and there were all these amazing films that get made and don’t really get out there, and so we were talking with one of the executive producers, and said, “Wouldn’t it be great to try and, like, get somebody,” and actually our executive producer was like, “You know, I know someone who knows Angelina; this is so up her alley, let’s try it.” Me and Z were like, “Whatever.” We were so tired at that point.
We sent the cut of the film and literally didn’t think anything of it and literally like a week later, she called us. We were sitting on a porch, and she called Z and was like, “Hi, it’s Angie. I love your film.” You know? And she’s been amazing. Like kind of opening doors and making sure. You know, a foreign language film about Africa. I mean this is a very hard market in America to try and get this film seen, so having her name totally helped in terms of, like, helping profile and just getting it known. She’s actually been a wonderful ambassador. She took it with her to the Global Seminar on Sexual Violence last June in England and had a screening with dignitaries in the U.N. She’s on the cover of Ms. Magazine this month actually talking about our film and the campaign that we’re doing about child marriage, so she’s been a true angel and so supportive of the film. It’s been awesome.
Difret opened October 23 at Lincoln Plaza in Manhattan.
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Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from The Artist. Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.