Made in Ethiopia Headed to Tribeca 2024
🎉 Feature documentary Made in Ethiopia announces World Premiere at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival 🎉
We’re excited to finally announce that Made in Ethiopia has been included in the Official Selection of the 2024 Tribeca Festival (June 5-16) for its World Premiere.
If you're in New York, we extend a warm invitation to join us at one of the three screenings between June 6th and 14th. Keep an eye on our website for updates on screening schedules and ticket sales.
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SYNOPSIS
When a massive Chinese industrial park lands in rural Ethiopia, a dusty farming town finds itself at the new frontier of globalization. The sprawling factory complex’s formidable Chinese director Motto now needs every bit of mettle and charm she can muster to push through a high-stakes expansion that promises 30,000 new jobs. Ethiopian farmer Workinesh and factory worker Beti have staked their futures on the prosperity the park promises. But as initial hope meets painful realities, they find themselves, like their country, at a pivotal crossroads.
Filmed over four years with singular access, Made in Ethiopia lifts the curtain on China’s historic but misunderstood impact on Africa, and explores contemporary Ethiopia at a moment of profound crisis. The film throws audiences into two colliding worlds: an industrial juggernaut fueled by profit and progress, and a vanishing countryside where life is still measured by the cycle of the seasons. And its nuance, complexity and multi-perspective approach go beyond black and white narratives of victims and villains. As the three women’s stories unfold, Made in Ethiopia challenges us to rethink the relationship between tradition and modernity, growth and welfare, the development of a country and the well-being of its people.
OUR TEAM
Max Duncan
Co-director, Co-producer, DoP
Max Duncan is an award-winning filmmaker, cinematographer and journalist whose work has appeared on platforms including the BBC, PBS, The Guardian, The New York Times and Al Jazeera. He worked for a decade in China, first as a video journalist for Reuters news agency in Beijing and then independently, exploring the country’s meteoric rise from many angles. He has since reported widely across Asia - including multiple trips to North Korea - Africa, Europe and Latin America. He has won a World Press Photo Award, been supported by organizations including Pulitzer, and is an alumnus of Yaddo and Logan Nonfiction programs.
Xinyan Yu
Co-director, Co-producer
Xinyan is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker based in Washington DC. Born and raised in Wuhan, China, Xinyan started her journalism career in 2012 as a producer for BBC News in Beijing. She has covered major breaking news across Asia and North America for a decade, and won a White House News Photographers Association award, an ONA Digital Storytelling award and a WAN-IFRA Asian Digital Media award. Now an independent filmmaker, Xinyan has directed content for international broadcasters including BBC, NHK, PBS NOVA and PBS Frontline. She is a New America National Fellow, a Firelight Media Doc Lab fellow, a Brown Girls Doc Mafia Sustainable Artist fellow and an alumnus of the Yaddo Residency.
Tamara Dawit
Co-producer
Tamara Dawit, an Ethiopian-Canadian filmmaker and alumna of Berlinale Talents and EAVE, has produced notable films such as GIRLS OF LATITUDE (2008), GRANDMA KNOWS BEST (2014), FINDING SALLY (2020), and ALAZAR (2024) through her company, Gobez Media. Currently, she's actively involved in producing a diverse range of dramatic and documentary projects. In 2021, Tamara was a TIFF Producer Fellow and won the Doc Institute Vanguard Award and the Gordon Parks Award for Black Excellence in Filmmaking. She's also a Chalmers Arts Fellow (2023) and a MacDowell Fellow (2024).
Biel Andrés
Editor
Biel Andrés is a film editor originally from Barcelona based in Copenhagen. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Audiovisual Communication from University Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). He has worked with the internationally acclaimed director Bille August, and the Danish film editor Janus Billeskov Jansen in The Kiss (2020), Ehrengard (2022), and The Count of Monte Cristo (2024). He has edited documentary films such as Balomania (2024), Attacked - The Copenhagen Shootings (2020), The Reformist - A Female Imam (second editor and tv editor, 2019), Oliver’s will (2018), or War Dance (2017). He is a member of the Danish Film Academy and the Society of Danish Film Editors.
Jeppe Bødskov
Editor
Jeppe Bødskov is a Copenhagen-based film editor, educated at the National Film School of Denmark. His documentary credits include Democrats (Best Documentary Feature, Tribeca Film Festival 2015) and President (World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award: Vérité filmmaking, Sundance 2021), both directed by Camilla Nielson, and the documentary series Cash, directed by Eva Muldvad. He has worked on many fiction series, including Follow the Money (Best TV Series, Danish Film Awards 2019). He is currently editing a documentary series on 30 years of Danish military history for national broadcaster DR.
Siyi Chen
Editor
Siyi Chen is a documentary filmmaker based in New York City. Her feature documentary debut Dear Mother, I Meant to Write about Death received support from IDFA Bertha Fund, Chicken & Egg Pictures, SFFILM, and the Asian Cinema Fund. The film premiered at Busan International Film Festival in Oct. 2022 and received a special mention from the Wide Angle Documentary Competition. It was also selected for International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam(2022) and nominated for the Best First Feature award. Chen is also the winner of the SFFILM’s 2019 New American Fellowship and a former artist-in-residence at the Jacob Burns Film Center. In 2023, Chen was selected as a part of the first cohort of PBS’s Ignite Mentorship for Diverse Voices Initiatives. Inspired by her cross-cultural background, Chen’s work explores migration, identity and family dynamics, with a special focus on creating lyrical and poetic portraits of women in the diaspora.
Ali Helnwein
Composer
Ali Helnwein is a Los Angeles based composer who has worked on multiple Emmy and Grammy winning projects. Films he's scored have gone to festivals ranging from Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, TIFF, and more, including projects for Netflix, HBO and other platforms. Several projects he composed for Netflix made it to the top 10. In 2010 his “Rain” Violin Concerto was commissioned by Kat Von D and premiered in downtown LA’s historic Million Dollar Theater. In his earlier days he founded the Traction Avenue Chamber Orchestra, which became known for showing up in places where one normally wouldn’t expect an orchestra, premiering new works, and playing to new audiences — performing in places such as a skatepark, a Chinatown Alley, downtown rooftops, etc. Aside from his own orchestra, his work has been performed by orchestras around the world.
We have several other festivals coming up in the US, Europe and Africa. Stay tuned. We hope to see you at one of our screenings!
Xinyan, Max and Tamara
A very enigmatic movie.