• Director(s):

    TONOLLI (FREDERIC)

  • Producer(s):

    ARTE GEIE, SUNSET PRESSE

  • Territories:

    Worldwide.

  • Production year:

    2019

  • Language(s):

    German, English, French

  • Rights:

    TV, NON-THEATRICAL, INTERNET

200 kilometers from Addis Ababa, by the southern road, lies the city of Shashaméné, the promised land of the Rastas. A world apart, a sacred place, in which the non-rasta, the profane, black or white, enters only with difficulty. You cannot erase three centuries of colonial history.

After Christopher Columbus “discovered” the Caribbean and North America, 15 million men and women were snatched from the African continent. In 1930, Rastafari Makonnen, 225th descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba – according to legend – was crowned Emperor of Ethiopia under the name Haile Selassie, King of Kings. In 1935, Mussolini's Italian troops invaded Ethiopia. Driven away by the inner resistance, with the support of the Rastas, the Emperor regained his throne. To thank them, he abolished slavery and offered them 500 hectares of his personal land in southern Ethiopia, in Shashaméné.
For the Rasta, Haile Selassie, the last Negus, is the redemptive messiah and Ethiopia is paradise...