Skip to main content

RAI FILM Festival takes place on 27-30 March 2025. Learn more.

Search our film database

Fatuma and Asya. Two Afar Girls in Ethiopia

Directed by Francesco Sincich

2014 – 59'

Synopsis

Two young Afar girls, Fatuma (10) and Asya (13), show us their daily life in two different contexts of the Afar Region in Ethiopia. Both of them face hard challenges: finding an alternative way to the mandatory arranged marriage (absuma) without breaking the Afar tradition for Fatuma, and the conflict with the Somali Issa and the livestock’s and land’s theft for Asya. Both of them will find the solutions: Fatuma will marry her boyfriend and Asya’s family will recover the stolen cattle thanks to the fi’ma, the traditional Afar militia.

RAI FILM Festival 2025

The next RAI FILM Festival will take place in person from 27-30 March 2025 at the Watershed Cinema and the Arnolfini International Centre for Contemporary Arts in Bristol (UK) and online throughout the month of April 2025.