DIFRET – Review by MaryAnn Johanson
Difret is an Amharic word — that’s the language of Ethiopia — that has a double meaning: “to dare” and also “the act of being raped.” Which is a bizarre duality to my Western ears, but difret is here embodied by 14-year-old Hirut Assefa (Tizita Hagere), who is kidnapped on her way home from her small village school to her family’s farm, held prisoner, and raped by a man who intends to make her his wife. Abducting girls for the purpose of forced marriage is all perfectly normal in rural Ethiopia, but Hirut has the unfeminine audacity to fight back, and she shoots her rapist and would-be “husband” dead. (He was dumb enough to leave her alone with his gun. Or perhaps it never occurred to him that she would use it.) Read more>>