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Zeresenay Berhane Mehari (born 1974), is an Ethiopian filmmaker. He is notable as the director of critically acclaimed films Difret and Sweetness in the Belly. Apart from cinema, he is the co-founder and Head of Original Content for Kana Television, the number-one rated free-to-air, private satellite entertainment TV channel in Ethiopia.
Sep 23, 2019 · Zeresenay Berhane Mehari is an Ethiopian-born filmmaker, whose first feature, Difret, about forced marriages, won audience awards at Sundance and Berlin. His sophomore film, Sweetness in the Belly [+.
- Find the 1-in-3,000 Person Who Is Right for Your Project. Two weeks before we started filming, I was ready to stop production because we couldn't find [an actress to play] the little girl.
- Be Ready to Write the $21,000 Check That Will Give You Peace of Mind. We had 2 million dollars' worth of gear with us—almost 2,000 pounds of gear. [The insurance check] was the biggest check we wrote.
- Know That You Will Have to Come Up with a Donkey-and-Mule Solution on the Fly. Filming on location in Ethiopia's capital city, Addis Ababa, and in the rural countryside, infrastructure was a big problem.
- Remember the Little Word That Can Protect Your Work. [During the initial financing stages], a couple of producers heard about the story; they thought the script was really good and offered to buy it.
Ethiopian filmmaker Zeresenay “Zee” Berhane Mehari is now working on his second feature, entitled Sweetness in the Belly [+ see also: film review trailer interview: Zeresenay Berhane Mehari film profile], based on Camilla Gibb’s 2005 novel of the same name.
Zeresenay Berhane Mehari is an Ethiopian born filmmaker currently working between the US and Ethiopia. He left Ethiopia in 1996 to obtain an Associate Arts degree in Film Production from De Anza College in Cupertino, California.
Broadcast exclusively in the lingua franca of Ethiopia, Zeresenay has created “breakthrough” shows for Kana TV that have “taken Addis by storm” according to African Business Magazine. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.
Presented by Angelina Jolie, Ethiopian director Zeresenay Berhane Mehari’s critically-acclaimed feature film debut “Difret” is now streaming on Netflix in the USA.
