“Wax & Gold”, interview with director Ruth Beckermann

During the Rome Film Fest 2026, we spoke with Ruth Beckermann, director of the documentary feature Wax & Gold. The documentary, presented at the Festival, examines Ethiopia through the life of a hotel and the histories attached to it. The film brings together contemporary scenes, archival footage, music and reflections on how outsiders have represented the country. Beckermann’s account is indeed notable for questioning both the European gaze and the easy narratives that can turn historical figures into symbols.

The interview

During our interview for FRED Film Radio, it was clear how the Hilton in Addis Ababa offered Ruth Beckermann a setting through which to encounter middle- and upper-class guests alongside employees with relatively stable work. In her documentary Wax & Gold, did not want to frame Ethiopia solely through images of rural poverty, a perspective that often dominates television coverage. The hotel does obviously not represent every layer of society, she stressed, but its mix of visitors and workers reveals a different part of the country. Its routines also give the documentary a place from which to observe social relations without claiming to speak for all Ethiopians.

Much of the historical footage in Wax & Gold was made by British, Italian and other European filmmakers or journalists, and Beckermann told us how she treated those images not as neutral proof, but as material shaped by the viewpoints of their makers and by her own position as a European filmmaker. The documentary indeed asks viewers to consider where historical images come from and how their meaning is formed. That approach also informs its portrait of Hailé Selassié, whose long rule included modernisation but also neglect during devastating famines. Beckermann described the emperor as a complicated figure, whose later reputation has been coloured by what followed his overthrow, including the communist regime.

Sound gives the film another way to approach Ethiopia beyond archival images and narration. Beckermann drew on Ethiopian jazz, and a musical passage accompanies the film’s departure from the hotel and the journey through the city, bringing its streets into the documentary’s sensory landscape. Beckermann’s Wax & Gold also reflects on Addis Ababa’s rapid transformation, where new construction exists alongside persistent poverty. While nonetheless Europeans may favour preserving old urban spaces, she found a sort of untold energy also in the city’s drive for better infrastructure and new buildings, even if it means contrasting that confidence in the future with Europe’s attachment to its past.

Plot