Finding Sally

A must watch for the young generation who don't really know about the past yet close history of Ethiopia. Learn about the past to understand the present and foresee the future. Concise, moving documentary about the Ethiopia's dark history. I really liked the video editing, the lighting use. Bertu. Abren enedemer.

Finding Sally is a beautiful film about family, relationships, civil war and untold stories in Ethiopia. The film provides the viewer with an excellent overview of the political landscape in Ethiopia in the 1970s and beyond and tells the story of a young woman and her involvement in political activism. The Ethiopian women in this film, from all generations and places (many have lived part of their lives in Canada) are strong, articulate, and human. You can feel their emotion as the niece narrates the story which weaves many heartfelt testimonials from their aunts who tell the story of their sister Sally who fought in the EPLF as a freedom fighter. There are many surprises and heart rendering reveals. A deeply intimate insight into the country and culture of Ethiopia.

This documentary was quite enjoyable and I am not sure what motivated the previous commenter to post such a malignant empty critique.

Finding Sally is a unique story about the director's own aunt, Sally. The film chronicles the experiences of Sally, a charismatic ideologue and fateful revolutionary, and her aristocratic family during the most tumultuous and violent periods in Ethiopia's modern history. The fact that Sally is the director's aunt results in an intimate form of story-telling -- we learn her story like we would a fascinating relative of our own. Sally's story seems both unique but also perhaps one of many untold, and gives the human experience of a nation's painful transformations.

Whatever this so called documentary tried to do was nothing but wishful thinking. The story itself had perhaps some potential if it was explored but the documentarist never even began. Instead the tortured viewer sees many irrelevant images, hears lots of empty phrases interrupted only by a terrible soundtrack and begins to think about everything else than Sally. Yes, who was she, what did she do, why and where? Nobody seems to be really interested. In the end all this looks like a documentary about Che Guevara made by Henry Kissinger or perhaps a home movie with family members unable to understand what Sally did - and that we still don't know.

My love for individual documentaries was put into test with Finding Sally. To start off, the entire topic the documentary was based off seemed personal and not interesting enough for viewers. Given a topic this uninteresting, it would need excellent directing to be a decent film. But I must say, the directing was very poor, even for a beginner.