“Black Lions – Roman Wolves”, interview with director Haile Gerima

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, Haile Gerima builds a layered narrative of resistance, historical erasure and Black solidarity.

“I didn’t imagine it would take so long”, Haile 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 Haile 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. Haile Gerima recounts the disappearance of crucial footage, including images of resistance actions and the dismantling of Emperor Menelik’s monument.

A Dialogue with Italy

Haile 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 narrative, particularly regarding the systematic use of poison gas. During screenings in Turin, Haile Gerima observed young Italian viewers in tears, confronting a history rarely addressed in their education.

For him, historical amnesia is not accidental but structural. Both Ethiopians and Italians, he suggests, have been misinformed by elites who shape selective narratives. “History should be debated and discussed,” he insists, not curated to preserve national myths.

Past and Present

Watching “Black Lions – Roman Wolves”  today inevitably evokes contemporary conflicts. Haile Gerima draws parallels between the League of Nations’ inaction during Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia and the perceived paralysis of the United Nations in current global crises. For him, the structural continuity is unmistakable: international bodies convene, resolutions are debated, but invasions proceed.

The resurgence of far-right ideologies in Europe and beyond intensifies his concern. Attempts to rehabilitate figures such as General Rodolfo Graziani, in his view, signal a failure to confront historical crimes. “Human beings don’t learn,” he says, reflecting on how denial perpetuates repetition.

Form as Resistance

At 531 minutes, the film resists conventional distribution logic. Yet Haile Gerima rejects the idea of duration as provocation. “It sized itself,” he explains. His formal choices, shooting in Amharic, privileging oral testimony, and refusing simplified binaries, stem from a commitment to narrative sovereignty.

European producers, he notes, often suggested making the film in English for commercial viability. Haile Gerima refused. “I don’t want to lose the accent of the story,” he says. For him, language carries melody, folklore and cultural specificity that cannot be translated into market formulas.

He also challenges reductive storytelling that frames history in simplistic oppositions of good and evil. “Filmmakers should search for the elusive truth,” he argues, warning against dogmatic narratives that replicate the same ideological rigidity they critique.

Plot