Original Story Published by: Judie Holcomb-Pack for The Chronicle
Photo Source: ©WS Chronicle
(Above) Filmmaker Sephora Woldu.
Sephora Woldu is a first-generation Eritrean. After visiting Eritrea, a small nation of about 5 million people located in the Horn of Africa, she began to think about how different her experience as an American-born Eritrean is from the experiences of her parents, who are immigrants. That led her to write and direct the film, “Life is Fare,” which will be screened Friday, April 5 at 5:30 p.m. at the UNCSA Babcock Theatre, Saturday, April 6, at 1:30 p.m. and Monday at 1 p.m. at Aperture Cinema, as part of the RiverRun International Film Festival.
Woldu admitted her parents didn’t understand why she wanted to write this story and make this film, but they are proud of her and her film. In fact, her mother, an actress, played a significant role in the film. The film tells the story through the eyes of an Eritrean immigrant who is a cab driver in San Francisco. He is homesick for his native land and begins to look at his life and explore the differences between his life in Eritrea and what it means to be an Eritrean in America. It shows the unresolved issues of immigrants who are struggling to reconcile their newly forged American personas against the identities they left behind in their homeland.
“People who came [to America] in the 80s had a different experience from those in the 90s and beyond,” Woldu explained in a phone interview with The Chronicle. During a trip to Eritrea in 2014, she said, “I saw I had a lot to learn about Eritrea and to see how people are talking about cultures and the different way people looked at that.”
To read the full article, visit The Chronicle.
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