Difret (2015) Movie Review
It is a common fact that the level of development of any society can be diagnosed by treatment of physically unprotected social groups as women, children and disable people. The movie Difret (2015), based on real events, broaches the problems of women treatment in Ethiopia, and it points out not only the social disparities between two genders, but judicial ones also. The lawyer Meaza Ashenafi is truly the symbol of audacity in the movie; braver than any man in her fight against injustice, she symbolizes the pointlessness of gender discrimination.
A lethal shot made by Hirut starts the very resonant case that eventually leads to the law against abduction of women, which has been a very old tradition in a rural Ethiopia. In the eyes of abductors who are simple farmers, Hirut is just another 14 years-old girl – a humble creature without the ability even to speak for herself. The girl turns out to be a brave person; after being kidnapped and cruelly raped, she escapes, and when the farmers trace her again, she kills her rapist in self-defense.
However, self-defense assumes that a person protects himself from something illegal, and yet the abduction is very not, so Hirut is arrested and under the trial which might lead to the death penalty. If it was not for Meaza Ashenafi, the penalty would be executed and the barbarian ritual would continue to exist, but her passionate work pro bono eventually leads to acquittal of Hirut and later to the law prohibited the ritual of abduction. The level of Meaza’s inspiration and the very existence of such problems in the modern world reminds the actuality of feminism movement to those who looks at it skeptically.
Meaza immediately faces the tremendous amount of resistance when she starts protecting Hirut, from the small police department head to the corrupt government workers – all the system is against her. Somehow all the officials are men, which is a very significant fact since most of them see the girl as a murderer of her future husband. The resistance level reaches its culmination when Meaza and Hirut are driving away from the gun-wielding villagers on horseback, seeking for revenge. The scene symbolizes the supremacy of education and learning among all the gender prejudices, since an educated woman who know how to drive a car rescues the girl from the ruthless men.
Before the scene of hunting the girl the third time, there is a scene of tribal council taking place in the village: father of Hirut and father of the killed rapist try to decide who is a victim. The situation is quite controversial in the eyes of rural and uneducated people: the ritual of abduction exists for a long time and is completely acceptable among many of the tribe members. Eventually, the tribal gathering decides to ban Hirut from her home and thus separate her from her family, which shows that the civilization is still to be developed in some rural places of the …
