Blood Engagement

The personal story of two Ethiopian prisoners – one who murdered his girlfriend, the other who stabbed his wife 12 times – is the beginning of a year-long journey following the victims and their families. Thus, the weakest link in the Ethiopian community’s immigration crisis in Israel is slowly exposed: domestic violence.
80% of Ethiopian prisoners in Israeli prisons have been convicted of violent crimes against women. In a reality of unemployment, poverty, alienation, detachment, foreignness and racism, the decline of the traditional power of the man as the head of the family is one blow too many for him. As the Ethiopian woman is conquered by the taste of freedom for women in Israeli society, the man clings to the privileges granted to him by tradition and refuses to let go of his grip on the only small piece of God left for him: his wife.
The result of the collapse of an entire conceptual world in a heartbeat is often fatal: murder and suicide.

Through the specific story of immigration and family violence in the Ethiopian community, a cultural gap is also revealed, which raises critical questions about democracy, tradition, permissiveness and the cruelty of the law, from the perspective of those born into a traditional, clan-based society.

Blood Engagement won an honorable mention at the Doc Aviv Festival and was screened at many other film festivals, including the Human Rights Festival in Barcelona, ​​the Munich Documentary Festival, the Astra Anthropological Festival in Romania and more.