This unique film tells the story of one of Africa's most isolated tribes - the Mursi - through the eyes of one its members Olisarali Olibui, who carries in one had a Kalashnikov and in the other, a camera. A pastoralist tribe, living in an area of Ethiopia the size of Wales, the Mursi are surrounded by potential threats 14 other tribes, national park proposals and the arrival of a new road bringing tourists. The film provides a compelling and at times disturbing insight into everyday life of a people whose culture, in the words of Olisarali, faces extinction.


The Mursi people of southern Ethiopia are seen in tourist brochures, museums and anthropological narratives as exotic others with primitive lifestyles. Western tourists spend thousands to visit the Mursi and take photographs of bare-chested and pierced-lipped Mursi women for a couple of birr (about ten cents). Images of Mursi in Ethiopia and elsewhere are stuck in these stereotypes that the camera viewing them from the outside has created. What happens when we hear their stories and see their lives from one of themselves, from one inside the community?
Olisarali, a young Mursi man, went to Australia for a few months where he learnt English and received a video camera, lap top and solar charger as gifts. He takes footage of Mursi lives, out of which the film is made with the help of the British producer Ben Young. How Mursi women feel being photographed by white tourists, how national parks restricting their hunting activities even as they allow tourists to hunt, have affected their lives, what difference a clinic makes in their community, their changing ways - these are some of the things we get to learn from the film as we also get to see their customs from their own perspective.

Director/filmmaker: Ben Young & Olisarali Olibui
Producer/production company: Ben Young
Country of production: UK/Ethiopia
Country/location of film: Ethiopia
Year: 2009
Length: 54 minutes


NAFA 2010 - The 30th Nordic Anthropological Film Association International Film Festival | 28. August - 1. September 2010 | Moesgård Museum - Århus - Danmark
* Being screened Wednesday 1 September at around 15.20

There was a test screening at the Addis International Film Festival in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in March 2009. See review at: http://en.ethiopianreporter.com/content/view/945/1/

Winner Best Documentary - National Geographic All Roads Film Festival 2010.

Honourable Mention for Olisarali Olibui - Jean Rouch Film Festival, Paris 2010.

Official Selection - Mountainfilm at Telluride 2010.

Official Selection - Margaret Mead Film Festival, New York 2010.

Official selection - Goettingen Film Festival, Germany 2010.

Official Selection - Vancouver International Film Festival.