RIFT FINFINNEE
Daniel Kötter | Germany, Ethiopia 2020 | 80 Min. | OmeU
ONLINE ON FRIDAY MAY 7TH & SATURDAY MAY 8TH
AVAILABLE IN AUSTRIA AND GERMANY ONLY
Austrian Premiere
RIFT FINFINNEE takes us on a journey through the periphery of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa (oromo: Finfinnee). In recent years, urbanisation has taken place on a scale representative of an entire continent in a dimension that also calls into question the ratiobetween Europe and Africa. Geographical, economic and – as the bloody riots of the last few months unfortunately show – also politically constructed ethnic divisions collide in a small space.
RIFT FINFINNEE is an allegorical narrationin large pictures and with a finely woven structure, which takes on the fault lines in Ethiopian society and is told by the people from the Off.
Writer, Director, Editor, Camera: Daniel Kötter
Producer: Meike Martens -Blinker Filmproduktion
Sound: Marcin Lenarczyk
Screenings and Awards
DOK Leipzig – DEFA Award
Ji.hlava IDFF
Doclisboa
Pravo Ljudski Sarajevo
Ecrans Urbains Lausanne
FIPADOC Biarritz
Duisburger Filmwoche
Kassel Dokfest
Signos da Noite Lisboa
HotDocs Toronto
Achtung Berlin
Docs Against Gravity
Biography
Daniel Kötter is an international filmmaker and music theater director. His works alternate between different media and institutional contexts and combine experimental film techniques with performative and documentary elements. They have been shown worldwide at numerous film and video art festivals, in galleries, theaters and concert halls.
His major works include the music theater trilogies Falsche Arbeit, Falsche Freizeit, Freizeitspektakel (2008-10), KREDIT RECHT LIEBE (2013-16) and STADT LAND FLUSS (2017-19, all with Hannes Seidl), the multi-channel trilogy Arbeit und Freizeit (2009-2011) as well as the film, performance and discourse series state-theatre about the urban conditions of performativity in the cities of Lagos, Tehran, Berlin, Detroit, Beirut, Mönchengladbach (2009-2014 with Constanze Fischbeck).
His extensive film and text work KATALOG (2013) was made in 13 countries around the Mediterranean with a particular interest in practices in space. Visual research leads him again and again to the African continent and the Middle East. 2014-18 he worked with the curator Jochen Becker (metroZones) on the research, exhibition and film project CHINAFRIKA. Under Construction. In 2017-20 he worked on the documentary film trilogy Hashti Tehran (2017, 60 ’), Desert View (2018, 84’) and Rift Finfinnee (2020, 80 ’) about urban peripheries in Tehran, Cairo and Addis Ababa. Hashti Tehran won the special award of the German Short Film Award.
Daniel Kötter is currently working on a series of spatial performances and 360° films on the landscape and social consequences of extractivism in Germany, West Papua, DR Congo and Estonia under the title landscapes and bodies.
