Tadesse - warum? (1994)

"Tadesse: warum?", a TV drama based on the true story of the short life of an Ethiopian refugee adopted by a German family. The boy who thus escaped the turmoil and horrors of the civil war in his country committed suicide five years later in provincial Southern Germany at the age of twelve. Most stunning was that the film was offered to me by SWF TV without the producers knowing I had spent my childhood in Ethiopia. So, the film "Tadesse: why?" became very much my interpretation of what led Tadesse, far from his native land, to put an end to his life. I was particularly proud to have been able to cast Marita Breuer (who played "Maria" in Edgar Reitz's "Heimat" 1984) as Tadesse's adoptive mother.