‘Fig Tree’ Is A Poignant Autobiographical Tale

Fig Tree film poster. 

With the Western obsessive “happily ever after” and “that love like our grandparents’ had” narrative, it takes ample courage and grit to tell a tragic coming of age love story. Set in Ethiopia around 1989, a friendship is tested in ways that Romeo and Juliet cannot compare. This situation is more gender and religion than family vendetta. The circumstances are more dire, stakes raised higher. Fig Tree‘s Mina and Eli have a beautiful relationship, but as such most things cannot always stay tied together like knotted ribbons. 

Eli (Yohannes Musa) and Mina (Betalehem Asmamawe) up in their fig tree. 

Smart, Jewish Mina shifts between tomboyish in her straight back braids and American shirts and shorts and maturing womanhood in an olive green checkered dress. Eli is a Christian, sweet-faced apple of his mother’s eye. Mina and Eli live together (her family is purposely hiding Eli). They are best friends, often running off to rendezvous beneath and around their fig tree. In that mystical meeting place, they can climb above those gnarly branches and be safe from the pop up soldiers kidnapping boys for war. Against the backdrop of this unfair civilization, their love is an urgent one, as urgent as their need to leave the country. Yet the process of leaving takes time and careful forgery. 

While Mina (Betalehem Asmamawe) smiles in every picture, her grandmother (Weyenshiet Belachew) keeps her face the same seemingly vacant expression.  Perhaps because she has had a hardened life or has forgotten joy. Later, however, she tells Mina that she was in love once. 

Mina has a closer relationship to her stern grandmother, but a tense one with her mother who abandoned them to live in Europe— they have to travel ways to call her. Meanwhile, Rata, Mina’s older brother— a returned veteran with a disability—is supportive of the war effort. In fact, he wishes to return to the frontlines. It is the grandmother and Rata who are quick to snuff out Mina’s outspokenness and show her that there are consequences to being “disrespectful” to authority. 

When Mina (Betalehem Asmamawe) spied the soldiers in the window during class, she does not hesitate to do what is right. 

The cast is led by the phenomenal Betalehem Asmamawe, making her acting debut. She carries this film on her shoulders as a young girl breaking through adolescence whilst simultaneously fighting the horrific system in the only way she can. Mina is brave, resilient, and passionate— emotions Asmamawe was able to evoke in every scene. 

Aäläm-Wärqe Davidian’s gut wrenching piece of work, based on her own life, daringly casts a shadow over the evil consequences of war, especially in its severity of stealing young boys unprepared for adult battles. She shows love and fear of Eli’s life through the eyes of Mina, his young love and his mother who has had a nightmare of his death. These two women make ultimate sacrifices in order to protect him only to be sabotaged. Winner of the TIFF Eurimages Adentia Award, the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival Jury Prize for Emerging Filmmaker, and a skew of honors for cinematographer Daniel Miller, Fig Tree deserves every last win and nomination. Hopefully this encourages Davidian to pen and direct more features, more stories from her poignant perspective. Her voice is unique and transformative, a pleasant evidence that there are emerging women creatives in Ethiopia determined to make an impact. 

Eli (Yohannes Musa) and Mina (Betalehem Asmamawe) are a calm before the storm. 

Fig Tree— a history lesson and love story all at once— is a must see and tissues will be needed. For Davidian's haunting story will leave audiences pining for a better, just world.