Catalogue > At random

The film Rift Finfinnee takes the viewer on a journey through the periphery of Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. In strictly composed landscapes and architecture shots, and with a soundtrack that interweaves the original conversations in a complex way, the film travels along the Akaki river gorge, dissecting the more than symbolic rift between city and rural. It takes the concrete geography, architecture and the every day life of individual agricultural and construction workers in the east of Addis Ababa (in Oromo: Finfinnee) as the starting point for an allegorical narrative about the becoming urban of an African society on the edge of civil war.

Daniel Kötter is an international filmmaker and theater director. 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, Rift Finfinnee the DEFA Award at DOK Leipzig. 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.