A Walk to Beautiful (2008)

Synopsis: A Walk to Beautiful tells the stories of five Ethiopian women who suffer from devastating childbirth injuries and make the journey to reclaim their lost dignity. Rejected by their husbands and... A Walk to Beautiful tells the stories of five Ethiopian women who suffer from devastating childbirth injuries and make the journey to reclaim their lost dignity. Rejected by their husbands and ostracized by their communities, these women are left to spend the rest of their lives in loneliness and shame. The trials they endure—and their attempts to rebuild their lives—tell a universal story of hope, courage, and transformation. Ayehu, Almaz, Zewdie, Yenenesh and Wubete suffered through prolonged, unrelieved obstructed labor in a country with few hospitals and even fewer roads to get to them.

Although they survived the often-fatal childbirth experience, they were left with a stillborn baby and feeling, as Ayehu tells us, that “even death would be better than this.” The obstructed labor has left each of them incontinent. In most of their cases, this is as a result of an obstetric fistula, a hole in the birth canal. We discover Ayehu, 25, living in a makeshift shack behind her mother’s house where she’s hidden for four years, shunned by siblings and neighbors alike because of her smell. She hesitantly begins her journey on foot, and once she gets to the Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa, she realizes for the first time that she isn’t the only person in the world suffering from this problem. At the hospital we meet Almaz, a woman also in her 20s who was abducted by her now-husband in a village market and has suffered from double fistula for three years. --© Official Site [More]

Director: Mary Olive Smith, Amy Bucher

Director: Mary Olive Smith, Amy Bucher
Producer: Steven Engel, Mary Olive Smith
Studio: Engel Entertainment