- Jazz guitarist Michael is called by his mother and join her in Brussels, stoking his deep resentment toward European entitlement, evocative meditation on the internalized weight of colonialism.
- "Melody of Love": a film by Edmundo Bejarano selected for World Premiere at Tribeca Festival 2023
"Melody of Love" is an atmospheric narrative of awarded Bolivian filmmaker Edmundo Bejarano. The movie presents a reflection of migrant identity before the backdrop of the bustling city of Addis Ababa.
In the capital of Ethiopia, a dynamic jazz scene is unfolding. A young musician, heart-breaker and rebel named Michael (Elijah Reid) shares the stage with great musicians like Mulatu Astatke, the father of Ethio-Jazz. It seems like he is on his way to the top until he receives a call from his mother in Europe, which confuses his entire existence. He has to go to Brussels to support his immigrant family and - in the eyes of his family - to build his own future. Michael wanders through the nightlife of Addis. He's torn by the uncertainty between the two worlds, between Africa and Europe and the promise each holds. He spends his last days living on the edge before his journey into the unknown.
With "Melody of Love" Edmundo Bejarano captures the soundtrack and the enigmatic atmosphere of Addis Ababa and shows what is left behind and what is at stake in a migration biography, instead of where the journey is leading to.
The movie shows the real life of artists in Addis Ababa. Jointly with Carlos Vargas, (a Colombian cinematographer and producer) Edmundo Bejarano realized the film while diving into the night life for many months, creating ties and relations with musicians. He composed a fiction with factual elements - settings, light, sounds and stories. The scenes are set in the vanishing splendor of the 1960s architecture. The protagonist moves with the hybrid tunes of jazz mixed with traditional Ethiopian rhythms and modes of the celebrated band Kayn Lab.
Edmundo Bejarano grew up in Bolivia and spent the longest time of his life in Berlin, Germany, where he studied and wrote poetry while meticulously preparing himself as a film maker. In recent years, he resided in Ethiopia, and currently lives in Mozambique. He made his debut as a film director with a trilogy on poets of Bolivia and Argentinia. His portrait of the punk poet Julio Barriga was awarded with the Fipresci Film Critics Award in Buenos Aires ("Julius' last Christmas").
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