Fig Tree

Director Aäläm-Wärqe Davidian drops you right into daily life in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa during the long Ethiopian Civil War. The year is 1989, and American audiences plunge into a completely new culture with the backdrop of a chaotic war, where teenage boys are "kidnapped" to supply the government's army.

The protagonist Mina (Betalehem Asmamawe), 16, is Jewish and lives with her grandmother (Weyenshiet Belachew) and her brother Rata (19), who has lost his arm in the war. A Christian woman and her son, Eli (Yohanes Muse), also live with the family. Mina grew up with Eli, and now, in adolescence, they are in love. The family goes to great lengths to hide Eli from the constant army raids to round up boys. When her chores are done, Mina steals away to meet Eli at their trysting spot, a giant fig tree.

A wheeling-dealing government official arranges papers and transportation for Jewish citizens to immigrate to Israel, and Mina's grandmother has been working with the woman to arrange the family's escape. Mina's mother is already in Israel. But Mina's distraught-how can they leave Eli and his mother behind?

The film captures "first love"-its childlike innocence awakening to sexual desire. These beautiful scenes between Mina and Eli, more than anything else in the movie, bring us into the family circle and the terrible ordeals the members endure. We experience what it really feels like to witness a son or your love being snatched by the enemy-being captive and abused to face what horrible fate?

Because we dive straight into the lives of Mina's family without any back story or exposition, we have to work fast to learn the characters' names, their customs, the war situation, and the plot. This full-immersion method of storytelling is the most effective way for an audience to experience a foreign world and crisis situation as if in it themselves.

In Fig Tree, women play a strong role. They absorb all the tragedies occurring around them; they keep life going for everyone else. They're the bulwark and the source of wisdom for children and men to depend on.

The movie's cinematography also tells the story (and won Israel's equivalent of an Oscar). Even though we're in a tense, scary, unpredictable war zone, the film is quiet, told more by the actors' faces and the scenery than through their dialogue. We become familiar with this setting and its culture; we become part of the community. Mina's family could be ours; we know the members that well, We easily identify with one character's anguished words, "I can't deal with all their evil anymore!"

Fig Tree is a beautiful, honest look at our world and the violence and cruelty that pervades it.

I really love the way the story is told in Fig Tree. It's not the first time I've seen a movie about young people that are caught up in the political drama that is plaguing their country, but this one is presented so effectively that I was completely enthralled. We get to meet the characters and understand their relationships under somewhat normal conditions, and then we see where the problem is going to start. For a portion of the film I wondered if perhaps the story should have been told from the perspective of Eli instead of Mina, but as the movie progresses it becomes clear why she is our window into this story. I also appreciate that extra layer of separation she has from what is going to happen, because it shows how helpless the young people are in this dire situation.

I don't know anything about the history of this time in Ethiopia, but Fig Tree is extremely effective in telling the story so that we can understand all the dangers that are looming because of the Civil War. While this might not directly reflect anything I've been through, that doesn't change the fact that the ordeal they are going through is extremely relatable. It also helped that there were so many likable characters in the film. Mina and Eli were great, but I also loved Mina's grandmother who is the perfect example of love and understanding. I was fully engrossed in this story, and may have shed a few tears throughout. Fig Tree is not exactly an easy film to watch, because things don't always go well for our protagonist, but it's a well-told story and one that I wish more people would see.

Vineyard Haven, MA premiere September 6, 2019 Menemsha Films USA Distributor