Wax & Gold

“Those first few minutes in an unfamiliar city – they are special moments. In those moments, a person creates a new world,” Ruth Beckermann once says in a voice-over. Inspired by Ryszard Kapuściński’s book *King of Kings*, which recounts the 44-year reign of Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie, she travels to Addis Ababa. At the Hilton Hotel there, she encounters colonial present and history, fact and fiction, truth and contradiction. She distils these multifaceted impressions into a complex, richly layered essay. In it, she reflects not only on what she observes or experiences, but also, time and again, on her own role as an author and filmmaker, whilst connoisseurs may recognise certain motifs from her earlier works.
(Florian Widegger)