Dagmawi Yimer is the guest of the second episode of VISIONI | RAIY. He is a documentary filmmaker whose work explores and tells the condition and life of people who migrate with a different lens.

Yimer himself was a migrant and experienced the most tragic aspects of migration. A fervent political activist, in 2005 he was forced to leave Ethiopia: he crossed the desert, he was incarcerated in Libyan prisons, he crossed the Mediterranean. Rescued by the Italian coast guard, a few years later he decided to co-found the Archive of Migrant Memories, carrying out a shift of position from the margins to the center of the narrative.

His rich filmography represents a precious archive of those who seek to fill the narrative and experiential void on the theme of migration, questioning terminologies and categories, and implementing in-depth paths to find new ways of recounting the uniqueness of individual stories and experiences.

VISIONI | RAIY is a series of conversations with Italian-Ethiopian artists and creatives. We talk about their life, work and vision—raiy in Amharic—delving into the different aspects of an Italian and Ethiopian identity, between presence and absence withing geographical, cultural and social boundaries.

VISIONI | RAIY is curated and produced by GRIOT in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of Addis Abeba. The series is presented on the occasion of the XXI Week of The Italian Language in the World.