Like many African metrop­o­lis­es, the Ethiopi­an cap­i­tal Addis Ababa is grow­ing rapid­ly. The Oromo farm­ers in the sur­round­ing area call it Fin­finnee, and a part of the Great Rift Valley still sep­a­rates the remain­ing land from the city. More and more farm­ers are giving up and moving to the city as day work­ers and, thus, into the tribal ter­ri­to­ry of the urban Amhara, which causes addi­tion­al conflicts.

The film begins with a long shot of the rift land­scape, includ­ing a narrow foot­bridge lead­ing through the valley, which is con­stant­ly used by passers-by in both direc­tions. It is the place of pas­sage between worlds. Hidden behind the hill lies the city, which is then shown through its con­struc­tion sites, end­less blocks of new build­ings, already decay­ing parts, a donkey cart trot­ting along a wide road, and street ven­dors at the road­side. A field, sur­round­ed by new build­ings, is actu­al­ly still being cul­ti­vat­ed, an emblem­at­ic pic­ture that sticks to one’s mind. On the audio track Daniel Kötter assem­bles sep­a­rate sound record­ings of con­ver­sa­tions with people he has spoken to or lis­tened to, a spe­cif­ic loca­tion remains unclear. They revolve around every­thing that has to do with the trans­for­ma­tion of the region— a tes­ti­fy to the deep cuts in lifestyles that urban­iza­tion has brought about.

Daniel Kötter is born in 1975 and lives in Berlin. He is a film­mak­er, video artist and musi­cal the­ater direc­tor whose work oscil­lates between dif­fer­ent media and insti­tu­tion­al con­texts. His films com­bine doc­u­men­tary obser­va­tion with struc­tur­al con­cepts and edit­ing. Often his works are con­tex­tu­alised in spaces of the visual arts or the­aters. 2008-11 he col­lab­o­rat­ed with the com­pos­er Hannes Seidl on a series of video per­for­mances and the mul­ti­ple chan­nel tril­o­gy „Arbeit und Freizeit“. With the stage design­er Con­stanze Fis­chbeck he worked on projects about social con­di­tions of per­for­ma­tiv­i­ty („state the­atre“, 2009-14) and the musi­cal the­ater tril­o­gy „Ökonomien des Han­delns: KREDIT, RECHT, LIEBE“ (2013-16). Between 2014-18 he col­lab­o­rat­ed with the cura­tor Jochen Becker (metro­Zones) on a web, exhi­bi­tion and film project „Chi­nafri­ka. Under Con­struc­tion“ about eco­nom­ic rela­tions between Africa and China. His fea­ture doc­u­men­taries are HASHTI TEHERAN (2016), DESERT VIEW (2018), YU GONG (2019).