About this episode
Screened in the Forum section of the 76th Berlinale, “Black Lions – Roman Wolves” stands as Haile Gerima’s most ambitious work to date. A central figure of the L.A. Rebellion and New Black Cinema, Gerima spent three decades crafting this 531-minute meditation on Italian colonialism in Ethiopia and its long shadow.
The film retraces the aftermath of Ethiopia’s 1896 victory at Adwa and the fascist invasion launched by Mussolini in 1935, when Italian forces deployed poison gas in a war crime that remains marginal in Italian public discourse. Through archival footage, testimonies of surviving witnesses, and excerpts from his father’s plays, Gerima builds a layered narrative of resistance, historical erasure and Black solidarity.
“I didn’t imagine it would take so long,” Gerima reflects. What began in the mid-1990s as a research project grew into what he calls an all-consuming process. “As I did the film, I realized how much I didn’t know.”
The Right to Remember
Central to “Black Lions – Roman Wolves” is what Gerima defines as “the right to remember.” Yet, he argues, memory remains hostage to colonial structures. Accessing archival material proved fraught. Much of the footage documenting Ethiopia’s invasion is held by European institutions, from Italy to Britain and France, and shaped by the colonisers’ perspective.
“The manufacturer of those images is the fascist invasion of my country,” he says. “And I’m not entitled to them.” The monopoly over archival images becomes a second act of dispossession. Ethiopia’s own viewpoint was rarely filmed, and when it was, access remained restricted or incomplete. Gerima recounts the disappearance of crucial footage, including images of resistance actions and the dismantling of Emperor Menelik’s monument.
A Dialogue with Italy
Gerima speaks candidly about Italy’s incomplete reckoning with its colonial past. While Italian cinema has extensively examined fascism’s domestic consequences, he notes a persistent silence regarding Libya, Somalia and Ethiopia. “Italian fascists were never indicted for crimes in Ethiopia,” he remarks.
He recalls encounters with Italians filmmakers, taxi drivers, and festival audiences, who insist that Italy was a “different” kind of colonial power. Yet testimonies from Ethiopian survivors contradict this narr
