Difret…

This week-end, the film Difret, produced by Angelina Jolie, won the prize for best fiction film screening in the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival. This debut feature from Ethiopian filmmaker Zeresenay Berhane Mehari also won the World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Though the plot of this Ethiopian film focuses on the bride abduction of a 14-year-old girl, bride kidnapping is not unique to Ethiopia. For example, in Central Asia, the old custom of bride kidnapping was recently revived in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (as you can see in the video below)…