Yared zeleke biography

This year’s Cannes Film Festival had a striking number of movies focused on the relationship between humans and animals. Grimur Hakonarson’s Ram and Gurvinder Singh’s The Fourth Direction are just two examples of this. Another good movie in this trend is Lamb, directed by Yared Zeleke, a coming of age movie centered on the relationship between a child and his lamb. Although this is the first Ethiopian film to be screened at Cannes, the director shows great promise; his work has already touched the heart of film critics. What follows is the interview I conducted with Zeleke following the screening of Lamb at the festival.

Offscreen: What was the inspiration for your movies?

Yared Zeleke: The source of inspiration was my own childhood in Ethiopia because I grew up in a difficult period in the country’s history as it was experiencing war, dictatorship, and poverty. All of that forced me to leave my country when I was only ten but for me there were also these external problems of the country. However, my childhood was really a fairy tale like the film. It was just full o

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