A Single Day Poster

A Single Day: Directed by Frédéric Furnelle. October 2019, Frédéric Furnelle is welcomed for a week by Assayuh, living in an isolated village, seven days' walk from Lalibela in Ethiopia. In a particularly patriarchal rural society, Assayuh raises her two daughters and two sons alone. In his new film, Frédéric Furnelle tries to portray ,with great modesty and honesty, the day-to-day life of this family. Through his images, we share moments of daily activities filmed during the harvest period when the villagers harvest teff, an Ethiopian cereal, in the fields. The images shot in black and white speak for themselves. They make us witness the preparation of the injera, this large traditional pancake, a practice that goes back to centuries-old gestures. The film also admirably testifies to this harsh life which forces Assayuh to go on foot to fetch water several kilometers away. Some sequences still make us share the intimacy of the family at the time of the coffee ceremony, ye jebena buna. Amharic, the language spoken in the film, is not subtitled. Our incomprehension of what is spoken gives way to the richness of the exchanges of silent glances and the gestures of complicity that the camera was able to capture so well. A Single Day gives us in all simplicity a glimpse into the daily life of a family living in a remote village in Ethiopia.