In Turin this week, a documentary about Italy’s invasion and occupation of Ethiopia is unfolding across five chapters. The National Cinema Museum’s Cinema Massimo is presenting Haile Gerima’s Black Lions, Roman Wolves from 4 to 10 November. The engagement is part of a six-city Italian tour that began on 2 November and is due to run through 17 November, bringing the film to cinemas and other cultural institutions.

The museum scheduled Gerima to introduce the first chapter on 4 November and to meet the audience after a screening of the closing chapter on 6 November. Co-producer Shirikiana Aina was also billed for those meetings. The programme makes a distinction worth checking before travelling. The Turin engagement runs through 10 November, while the listed appearances by the filmmakers were tied to particular screenings earlier in the week.

A different place to begin the story

The Berlinale’s Forum programme, where the film screened earlier in 2026, describes a work developed over three decades. Gerima draws on archival material, interviews with witnesses and dramatic writing by his father. The chapters cover the memory of Adwa, the invasion, the occupation, guerrilla warfare and victory. The Cinema Massimo programme places the total running time at about nine hours.

Adwa gives the series a starting point before the fascist invasion of 1935. Ethiopian forces defeated Italy in 1896, the subject of Gerima’s earlier film Adwa: An African Victory. The newer work follows a later attempt at conquest and the resistance it met. The two moments carry different histories. Starting with the earlier victory gives the viewer time to understand why the memory of an Ethiopian defeat of an invading army mattered when Italian forces returned decades later.

The film also poses a question about the evidence viewers see on screen. A colonial archive may preserve extensive images made by the invading power. Those images can offer evidence while carrying the assumptions of the people who framed, selected and circulated them. Putting testimony beside that material gives audiences a chance to ask what an image records and whose understanding of the event it was designed to advance. The Berlinale’s description identifies that tension as part of Gerima’s approach. The inclusion of his father’s plays also makes room for a different kind of record. A family’s creative work can show how events were interpreted and passed on long after the camera crews had gone.

How an unusually long film travels

The Italian tour shows how local hosts can build different schedules around the same work. Cineteca Milano lists the first two chapters on 11 November and the next two on 12 November. Its programme places the final chapter and a discussion with Gerima on 14 November. Rivista Africa reports that the wider itinerary includes Florence, Turin, Rome, Bologna, Milan and Padua, with local groups involved in organising public discussion in Bologna.

A format like Milan’s gives each evening a shape of its own and spreads the viewing commitment across several dates. It also asks more of the audience than a single ticket and a single journey. Clear listings are especially valuable for a work like this. Viewers need to know where they can begin, which chapters are being shown together and when a discussion is scheduled. For venues, those decisions are part of making a long documentary accessible. A chapter title alone tells a prospective visitor little about the length of the evening or what they may have missed at an earlier screening.

RIM’s coverage of the Apt African film festival and its filmmaking masterclass examined another way that screenings and conversation can work together. In Gerima’s tour the setting carries particular weight. Italian audiences are being invited to spend time with Ethiopian accounts of a war waged by Italy, in rooms where there is also space to discuss how that history has been remembered. The format gives that discussion time to develop across chapters and beyond the closing credits.

*Featured image: AI-generated conceptual illustration for RIM.*

Why this matters

For Ethiopian and wider African diaspora audiences, the tour gives Ethiopian historical testimony a place in public discussion in the country that invaded Ethiopia. For independent filmmakers and exhibitors, it shows what a partnership among cinemas, archives and community organisations can make possible when an ambitious documentary needs several screenings and room for discussion.

Sources

Topics: Haile Gerima · Ethiopian cinema · Black Lions Roman Wolves · Documentary film · Turin · Film exhibition

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