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When the clock shows 4:00 PM in Vienna, it is 6:00 PM in Addis Ababa. Except, according to Ethiopian time, it is actually midnight. Why? In this place, nothing has a simple answer. For acclaimed filmmaker Ruth Beckermann (Favoriten, Mutzenbacher), Ethiopia used to be synonymous with Emperor Haile Selassie, the harbinger of modernity—until a controversial book revealed to her that this modernization came hand-in-hand with terrible corruption and iniquity. To examine the country’s layered history, she centers her film on its first international hotel. It serves as a microcosm, a living theater of conversations with staff and fascinating encounters between the authentic and the exotic, bearing witness to the layers of time in every object or decoration: feudalism and fascism, ethnic tensions, and Pan-African hope. “Wax and gold” is a traditional Ethiopian idea that embodies the tension between the surface meaning and the hidden ones underneath it. True to its name, this film is a multi-layered documentary confronting Ethiopia’s place in the geography of memory. The screenings of this film have been made possible through the generous support of the Austrian Cultural Forum and Austrian Embassy in Tel Aviv
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