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Pretty Good

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Fitting into the 'slice of life' sub-genre that seems to be so popular in some festivals and for some Western public, "Lamb" doesn't stray far away of the 'movie from little known place that tells you how poor and difficult they have it in their everyday life'. Does that mean that it is a bad movie or that it does a bad job in doing it? No, but it has zero originality and follows too closely the 'unknown-culture- stereotypes' rule-book.Ephraïm's mother has died, and his father leaves him with some relatives. With him he basically takes the clothes he is wearing and Chuni, his lamb, that was his mother's. Will Ephraïm be able to keep Chuni alive, or will she end up roasted?"Lamb" is at its best in the moments when it takes the story with a little bit of humor and centers on Ephraïm's efforts to keep the lamb alive. But when it follows the 'explaining-the-culture-to-all-those- white-people-in-front-of-the-screen' moments it just can't keep the level. From the music to all those meetings of people where they talk about the past or the country's culture it reeks too much of being a movie being made with the foreign-rich market in mind.Too bad, because the lamb's story is one that could have been way more interesting.

Lamb is Yared Zeleke's love song to his homeland Ethiopia and, like any true love song, it is simultaneously grand, spontaneous, gentle, quite, ineffable, solidly grounding and simply exquisite. The protagonist Ephriam, is forced to leave his home as a child. Ephriam's mother died from the drought and he travels with his father to meet relatives. His father leaves to find work in the city and promises to return when the rains come. This sudden loss of home and parents takes hold of him profoundly but he has one comfort, his lamb Chuni, the last link to his treasured past family life. Ethiopia is the only country in Africa that the Europeans never colonized. Zeleke also had to leave this home as a child. Ephriam and Chuni are like two peas in a pod and their friendship eases the trauma of displacement and brings comfort when Tsion, a headstrong, education-thirsty young woman in the family refuses to speak to him and also when his uncle mocks him for cooking, which is traditionally a woman's task. However, when his uncle announces that he will be sacrificing Chuni on the upcoming holiday, Ephriam is agonized and agitated. He embarks on a plan to save Chuni and return home. He decides that he will sell samosas in the market and earn enough money to buy the bus fare back home. He suffers several setbacks, including a gang of bullies in the market and soon the day of the sacrifice approaches. He manages to get someone to look after Chuni and he tells his uncle that the lamb was stolen. His uncle beats him but at least Chuni is safe. He eventually finds her a safer place with a young shepherdess and figures out how to deal with the bullies. He even becomes friend with Tsion. Eventually, Ephriam saves enough money and returns to the shepherdess to get Chuni. The lamb doesn't want to leave with him. She has found a new home. The shepherdess tells him to let go. Lamb is a coming of age story. It respectfully tells of the challenges of growing up as an outsider without parents and also in a multi-religious society; Jews, Christians and Muslims populate Ethiopia and Ephriam is part of the minority group of Felashas. Rediat Amare and Kidist Siyum who played the roles of Ephriam and Tsion were part of a casting process where Zeleke auditioned more than 6,500 people; more than half of them were children. Many other people in the film were from that village and had no experience with filming. Some of them had never seen a film before. The boundless landscape stood as its own character in the film. Leaning almost towards pathetic fallacy, the emotions of Ephriam echoed off the beautifully stoic mountains. Zeleke inspires one to wonder what sort of imprint those mountains would leave on a soul. Surely, through Lamb, we can attempt to understand the imprint it left on his. Lamb premiered in Cannes' Un Certain Regard 2015. It was the first time an Ethiopian film has ever screened as an Official Selection at Cannes. Zeleke has also written, produced, directed and edited several short documentary and fiction films. He also worked with Joshua Atesh Little on the award-winning documentary The Furious Force of Rhymes. Lamb is his first feature-length film.

Boy tries to earn enough money to rejoin his father who left him in the countryside with relatives while trying to find work in Addis Ababa. The lessons learned, futility in having the money to take a sick child to a doctor, interference, relentless poverty (the older people remark that they ate better growing up than their grandchildren do) that only worsens. This film could not have been made by a Westerner. Audience sat stunned at the end. Where is the turnaround, happy ending, even the girl getting together with the boy or her hero? She does everything possible to meet her hero but audience knows what will go wrong with her plan. By the end we have been shown why there are no other possibilities.A boy wants to save his pet sheep but in this place of limited resources everyone, even the sheep, has a plan and a need for what a sheep can bring into their lives, be it a nutritious meal, a party,companionship, bus fare to an easier place or enough money to take a child to a doctor.

At the start of the story Ephraïm has lost his mother due to famine and his father drops him with his relatives in another part of rural Ethiopia. Seeing huge hills, mountains and green landscapes at first the story seems pastoral but Ephraïms adoptive family are also hungry and living in poverty.Ephraïm loves his pet lamb but his Uncle sees the lamb as food for an upcoming feast. The story is slight but it offers us an almost documentary style look at life in Ethiopia. A little girl is sick and slowly it dawns on us - the audience that the mostly likely cause is malnutrition. The mother in the story takes her daughter (Ephraïms cousin) to a doctor who says she needs food to get well. Against all of this backdrop Ephraïm misses his Dad and is anxious to protect his pet sheep and has several adventures. Watch this film for a glimpse of life in Ethiopia. There is a side plot with one of Ephraïm's cousins who is trying to study and make her way in an Ethiopia that isn't based on doing same old things with predictable tensions and uncertain outcomes.