Donald Coles

What makes this story-film an epic is the orchestration of silence and dynamism. Silence and action are rudely punctuated by a haunting harmonica or the screaming train whistle or guns blasting. The classes of humanity are made evident by different interpretations of what was at stake.

What a story. Like a true to life story about the displacement of children during WWII. I enjoyed it.

In hindsight it was a sado masochistic story gone out of control.

Before this movie, Difret, I did not know that old traditions of Ethiopia allowed males to abduct females for marriage. Abduction was inevitable when the father did not allow the daughter to marry. You could see the influence of the free, educated and modern world embodied in Hirut's councilor Measa. Back in the 1960s when I was a kid there were still native South American tribes that had never heard of the modern world.