Hot Docs at Home is a Selection of Films from the Postponed 2020 Edition of the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival That Will Air Thursdays in April and May on CBC, Documentary Channel, and CBC Gem
A filmmaker learns of the hidden story of her long-lost aunt in Finding Sally. After moving from Canada to Ethiopia, to learn more about her history, Tamara Dawit is surprised to learn that she had an aunt that she never knew of. With the help of her surviving aunts Kibre, Tsion, Brutawit, and Menbie, Tamara learns about the life of her aunt Sally, who became involved with the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party. This includes revisiting the dark and unspoken past of Ethiopia, wherein 1974 the Derg militia overthrew the monarchy and began a conflict with the EPRP that lead to the genocidal Red Terror.
Through Finding Sally, filmmaker Tamara Dawit uses a story involving her own family to provide a larger commentary on the dark political history of Ethiopia and the reluctance of its citizens to talk about it. Finding Sally makes heavy use to archive footage from the 1970s to help tell the story of Tamara’s long-dead aunt Sally, who went from a Canadian-raised daughter of an ambassador to becoming a member of a communist organization that came to be known by the Derg as public enemy number one. Altogether, Finding Sally is an interesting mix of family autobiography and then the sociopolitical history of Ethiopia.