Adamt
2023 · 19m · Ethiopia
Directed by Zelalem Woldemariam
Genres: drama, fantasy, musical
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
A young Ethiopian composer and drummer struggles with a childhood trauma until a deaf spirit appears and inspires him to channel his memories in a new direction.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A deaf spirit guide sounds like the kind of well-meaning twist that could sink a film, but Woldemariam uses the conceit to actually *disable* the usual coming-of-age machinery—trauma here doesn't get resolved by understanding it, but by listening past it, which is genuinely weird.
The film sits thoughtfully in the lineage of musical drama-fantasy (think *Annette*, *A Ghost Story*), but what distinguishes it is Woldemariam's restraint: the surrealism never overwhelms the formal clarity of how sound and image are allowed to work in conversation.
The decision to make the transformative figure deaf—and to build the film's entire emotional architecture around what the protagonist *hears* versus what he *perceives*—is the kind of structural choice that justifies every other creative risk; it's filmmaking that knows exactly what it's doing.