Made in Ethiopia [Max Duncan for Hard Truth Films]

MADE IN ETHIOPIA
Directed by Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan
Certificate: PG
☆☆☆☆

BACK-BREAKING work under a baking sun, toiling in fields to scrape an existence. Sounds hard work, right? But is being corralled for 10 hours a day into a dark production line for a subsistence wage any better?

This question is one of the many that this careful documentary unpicks. It tells a story of true globalisation, but not in the usual manner – when the word globalisation comes up, all too often it’s followed by a dry economic take about wages and GDP. Instead, film makers Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan have spent four years embedded in a rural Ethiopian community where a Chinese firm is planning to build new factories.

We meet Motto the Chinese businesswomen who is telling farmers that when she buys their land, they’ll be given adequate compensation in the form of new fields nearby and a homestead to live in. Not only that, but the factories will bring amazing prosperity and, well, it’s the future, so suck it up.

As we see, big promises are not followed through, and as time ticks on and the farmers feel increasingly miffed, conflict is always going to arise.

Motto comes over as a snakeoil seller. At a pitch meeting, she sounds horribly insincere: “When I fly into Addis Adaba, it is like I am coming home!” she gushes. She claims that her industrial park is so beautiful it is the city of the future and will bring tourism, too. You can see in her eyes how much she wants to believe the words tumbling out of her mouth.

Alongside Motto we meet worker Beti, who is on a jeans-making line. She earns a starvation wage and is under pressure from managers to increase her productivity.

In the fields, the filmmakers follow Workinesh, a mother of five who wants her daughters to study and find work in the factory. It prompts the question whether the “progress” sold is anything of the sort, or just another project to exploit poor people.

There are misunderstandings and a yawning chasm in culture. We see the impact economic inequality has on relationships: mercenary capitalism laid bare. This is a careful film that does not spoon-feed the viewer to reach a destination of outrage. Even the people who are not covered in virtue are explained – you will feel sorry for poor Motto and the money-driven, morally bankrupt life she has chosen.