Kaleab and Jemal are two who are willing to endure any travail to reach America and what they deem as a promise of a better life, but is it? Along the way Kaleab meets Winta, who is from neighboring Eritrea and on a similar journey as Kaleab. Kaleab and Winta fall in love with each other as the group of Ethiopians and Eritreans travel an arduous and illegal path from East Africa through Libya, Italy, Mexico and finally to America, but their love for each other is tested thoroughly as the group meets up with violence, sickness and, ultimately, tragedy.
A love triangle stretching from Bahir Dahr to Las Vegas. Theodros Teshome's film surpassed his own Kezkaza Welafen as Ethiopia's highest grossing film.
Set in the Sidist Kilo campus of Addis Ababa University, Kezkaza Welafen directly addresses the social tensions of everyday life for Ethiopian university students with the dangers of HIV/AIDS as its central theme. It follows the story of the female protagonist Selam, a promising university student and advocate for the prevention of HIV/AIDS who secretly believes she too is living with the disease.
