Credits

Regie

Xinyan Yu & Max Duncan

Genre

Documentary

Speelduur

91

Land

Canada, Ethiopia, USA, UK, Denmark

Taal

Chinese, Amharic, English, Oromo

Ondertiteling

Engels!

Storyline

In Dukem, a city located in the heart of Ethiopia, there is a huge industrial park built by Chinese investors since 2008. Motto, general manager of the park, is a woman of distinction, yet she too must pull out all the stops to make the next, huge expansion a reality. That expansion will involve 30,000 jobs, but it will also leave the park adjacent to a dusty farming town, where people’s lives are still defined by the changing of the seasons. What are the implications of all this?

Filmmakers Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan followed this whole process for four years, resulting in this nuanced film about the many contradictions involved: between the Chinese and the Ethiopians, between urban and rural, between man and woman and, above all, between profit-driven entrepreneuralism and land-rooted tradition. Motto gives her take on things, as do factory worker Beti and farmer Workinesh.