Esther Kibreab

This beautiful film about the immigrant experience is a San Francisco film about Eritrea. Sephora Woldu plays "Sephora" who, like the director, is an architecture student but also a filmmaker. She is pitching to her traditional mother a film she wants to make about a man who fled their home country and ended up in San Francisco. As a recently arrived immigrant, he is terribly homesick for his native Eritrea, but will not admit it due to unease towards speaking ill of the country; and more consciously in hesitance of admitting hard truths about his culture and himself. "It’s colorful and visually whimsical in a way that can only be described as if the Wizard of Oz went to Africa," said Woldu.

15-year-old Robel embarks on an errand to deliver a suitcase across town, destined for a sick family member in his parents' homeland of Eritrea. He enlists the help of his best friend Fahmi, but an unexpected turn transmutes his simple task into an odyssey across the rapidly gentrifying city of Seattle.