Doc Edge 2025 Craccum Coverage | Made in Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, a Chinese industrial park promises 30,000 jobs, with factory director Motto Ma leading its Stage Two expansion. The locals we follow along—farmer Desbele and factory worker Beti—also pin their hopes on the project, albeit faced with a non-committal government juggling the conflicting interests of local farmers and the local county mayor's desire to build a high-end nature park to attract even more foreign investors.

We don't follow our dream, we just go where life takes us.

Haters say this is one-sided socialist propaganda and not the most predictable and logical conclusion to the Global South's continued trajectory of economically devouring each other before they eventually realise the fundamental expendability of their existence under the big boogeyman that starts with 'capital' and ends with '-ism'. Made in Ethiopia casts the net wide enough to cover the developing country's basic economic constituents: local and national Ethiopian government officials, factory labourers, rural farmers, and the rising presence of Chinese investors and developers.

Hindsight reveals their aspirations for upward socioeconomic mobility to be all for nought. The Chinese industrial park fails to secure the neighbouring farmers' land for expansion, while the farmers never get their promised replacement land to relocate to for the Chinese. The nature park—built on land that was supposed to be for the relocating farmers—organised by local government officials and business investors halted construction midway due to increased geopolitical tensions caused by the Tigray war, disintegrating any hopes for further foreign investment.

There are no winners within the four to five years the filmmakers dedicate themselves to their subjects. Amidst all these disappointments of globalisation, it has never been more tested with such unmerciful force than the COVID-19 pandemic. The events depicted throughout this film can almost be traced with a single line, a linear causality: decreased labour productivity due to quarantine resulting in stagnating wages to recoup losses resulting in increasing antagonism between Chinese foremen and local Ethiopian factory workers resulting in urban drift increasing cost of living resulting in reluctant cultural assimilation through attending Chinese language classes via night school to maintain worker's competitiveness resulting in upskilling and ending up back at the Chinese factory as an office manager because they provide the few remaining stable job opportunities despite its industrial drudgery and monotony.

That last instance evinces arguably the most potent and summative of statements towards this entire predicament delivered by none other than a Chinese floor manager to one of the workers:

China talk talk okay, money big big okay?

All of this, without even mentioning the most disadvantaged within this systematic shafting: women.

But whatever solace and reassurance one may have about the future of Ethiopia—especially dealing with multiple civil wars within the past three years—our female Chinese factory manager, Motto, who we've followed until her eventual resignation, delivers the film's final fatalistic epiphany:

Development is then the hard truth. Those who fall behind get trampled on. That's the cruel reality. If you press on, there's a glimmer of hope. There's always a way forward.

If this is not the most painfully flawed attempt at self-actualisation, egregiously ignoring any semblance of class consciousness or revolutionary ire, I don't know what is.

Doc Edge Festival is in Auckland from 25 June through to 13 July. The festival will also be showing in Christchurch and Wellington (16 July - 27 July).

Made in Ethiopia will be premiering in Auckland on the following dates:

26 June 2025 - 8:15pm - Bridgeway Cinema
27 June 2025 - 8:15pm - The Capitol Cinema

Made in Ethiopia

Three pioneering women navigate the bumpy expansion of the biggest Chinese industrial zone in Ethiopia.

Doc EdgeJohn Lau