Video: The Medallion

In Ruth Hunduma’s short documentary “The Medallion,” a mother’s memories serve as a window to a history of genocide and survival in Ethiopia.

Running time: 19 minutes

Distributed by The New Yorker

Ruth Hunduma: Director / Writer / Poet

Ruth Hunduma is a writer, director, photographer, actor and poet. She is the recipient of the 2019 John Hay Lobban prize in English Literature from Birkbeck, University of London. Previously working in film and tv development, Ruth leaped into directing in 2022 when she won the 2022 Roundhouse Film Fund and the 2022 BFI short documentary fund.

From African Women in Cinema:

Ruth Hunduma, laureate of the Hypatia Golden Award for the documentary The Medallion at the 10th edition of the Alexandria Short Film Festival (ASFF) in Egypt

The documentary portrays the filmmaker’s mother, a survivor of the Red Terror in Ethiopia which left hundreds of thousands of victims. A powerful testimony to a nightmare that remains unknown in the West.

Excerpted from an interview with Ruth Hunduma by Nicolas Bardot at lepolyester.com:

The idea for the film came from a short story I wrote when I was at university called The Medallion, about the genocide of the Red Terror, from the point of view of my mother. In 2022, during the Tigray War, as I was preparing to travel to Ethiopia to spend time with my mother, my producer suggested that I re-visit the story of The Medallion. Within the context of the civil war at the time, it was the perfect context to open up a discourse not only about the war itself, but also about Western media bias during the Red Terror genocide, which unfortunately, like the Tigray war, attracted little or no attention. I started filming it myself with the cameras that I had on hand; and bit by bit, I started constructing the DNA of the film.