Sami’s Odysseys

Director’s Note – Robin Dimet

I met Sami during my first visit to Addis Ababa in September 2014. After traveling, working, and filming in Russia for about fifteen years, my discovery of Ethiopia was a dizzying experience. It was an unknown, mysterious land to me: its language, history, and culture were totally unfamiliar. Lured by the magnetism of this new universe, my meeting with Sami was decisive: with him, I walked through Addis for days and nights, wandering streets and alleys, entering places that, as a simple visitor, I would never have thought existed, and having memorable encounters, all thanks to him. I shared in his daily life as a marginal and penniless man, but also as a man with a singular inner world, a man with a passion and a great project: to make the epic stories of Ancient Greece available to his fellow citizens.

We quickly became friends. While his economic insecurity affected me from the start, I also remember being struck by his encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of his country as well as of literature, poetry, music, and cinema. As we got to know each other, I discovered another aspect of his personality, which ended up making the most lasting impression of all: his stubbornness. The task he had set for himself in this life of wandering appeared to me like a contemporary odyssey, in the style of the mythological heroes he is so fond of. From this powerful metaphor, my desire for a film was born.

Every day, Sami struggles against the Gods of real estate, and dreams of the Cattle of Helios. Sometimes, he is tempted by the illusory sweetness and escapism of the Lotus- eaters (khat users) and gives in to the calls of the Sirens of alcohol. Though haunted by a faceless cohort of deceased friends, Sami never totally succumbs to discouragement in the face of the pitfalls standing between him and his project. Like Sisyphus, he tirelessly pursues his desire to publish his insane work. All the while, his veins pulse with the convulsive beat of a metropolis in the throes of metamorphosis.