CM 2021

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The Last Tears of the Deceased

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Goals at CineMart We are keen to meet with European producers, sales agents and distributors. We are specifically looking for co-producers who can help the project access distribution in their territories and provide both creative and technical crew.Synopsis The Last Tears of the Deceased is a dreamlike journey set in contemporary Ethiopia that follows the story of a recently ordained orthodox priest named Samuel. Given to the church as a child, Samuel was raised as a cleric and is charged with managing a vast cemetery. One day, in the course of his graveyard duties, he finds something in the church burial records of 1994 that forever changes his life: a grave with his name on it.Intrigued, Samuel confronts his older sister Nestanet, who admits that a childhood fall from a tree had temporarily killed him. She tells him he came back to life a day later. Samuel starts to wonder what he might have seen in the afterlife.Against the warning of his mentor and the nervous pleading of Nestanet, he goes to the Northern Highlands to find a Debtera (a shamanic priest) that his mother was following at the time of his death, and who, according to his followers, can divine the future and illuminate the past. However, he must first free his estranged uncle Ayalew from a religious site so that he can guide him through the Lake Tana Islands to find the Debtera. At the lake, Ayalew is injured in an altercation when he kills the local bandits, revealing his darker side to Samuel.On one of the islands, Ayalew is nursed back to health by a nun. In an argument, an increasingly manic Ayalew reveals to Samuel that his fall wasn&rsquo;t accidental: he was pushed off a tree by his sister, Nestanet. It also becomes clear that Ayalew intends to kill the Debtera once they find him. Samuel abandons Ayalew and continues his journey to the Debtera&rsquo;s island. When he finally gets there, the Debtera puts him into a dream journey. He sees everything except the afterlife. He only feels it. Emptiness. He decides there must be nothing after death. Samuel heads back to Addis Ababa and quits the church.He then moves back into his childhood home and is horrified to find that Nestanet has hung herself from the same tree he fell from. Devastated, he is confronted with performing a &lsquo;fithat&rsquo; (an ancient ritual for the dead) to save her soul from damnation. This forces him to make a choice between believing and not believing in an afterlife. For the sake of his sister, he chooses to believe and performs the ritual.Director&rsquo;s Biography Beza Hailu Lemma is an Ethiopian filmmaker based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He has written, directed, and independently produced factual TV content and several short films, including Ballad of the Spirits (2017) and Adeby Abeba (2019). Beza was an artist in resident at the Africa Centre in Australia (2017) and the Realness Screen Writing Residency (2019) in South Africa. He has also participated in Berlinale Talents, IEFTA Addis to Cannes Program, TIFF Filmmakers Lab, and Produire au Sud. The Last Tears of The Deceased is his debut feature film.

Gobez Media

Abba SAMUEL, an orthodox priest with a crippling fear of death, goes on a dreamlike journey of inquisition about 1994; the year of his supposed death.