Kotteni (in progress)
[still]
2022-present
In collaboration with Heran Abate

"Kotteni spans five decades and many cities - Dire Dawa, Jimma, Addis Ababa, New York, Osaka and Aleppo. Through images culled from live footage, stop-motion animation, state-sponsored periodicals and family photographs, two filmmakers delve into the tensions between handcraft and mechanized labor, slow work and a market economy, personal story and official narratives of a nation's becoming.  All through the lens of cotton, Hasabie and Heran unearth the stories of four characters - two ancestors, a godmother and a fictional factory worker to bridge the rupture caused by migration to generational knowledge."