Manot is a blind man who plays the saxophone on the sidewalk of Silom road in Bangkok. Ten meters away from him Ayutthaya, a deaf-mute homeless man, sniffs glue and sleeps all day. Through an impossible encounter between the two, instigated by the director of the film, secrets will unfold that will change their perspectives.

Rift Finfinnee takes the viewer on a journey through the periphery of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. In strictly composed images and a soundtrack that interweaves the original conversations in a complex way, the film takes the concrete geography, architecture and the everyday life of individual agricultural and construction workers in the east of Addis Ababa (in Oromo: Finfinnee) as the starting point for an allegorical narrative about the urbanisation of African societies on the edge of civil war. The film documents the rural-urban transformation of space and its consequences for living together using the example of four settlements in the east of the fast-growing Ethiopian capital: the village of Dingaja, the Bole Arabsa social housing estate, the Ayat Condominiums, and the gated community CCD Homes. Four different backdrops for the profound social change in Ethiopia, all four within sight of each other, but separated by a deep rift, which divides city and non-city, present from projected future, Oromo from Amhara: the gorge of the Akaki River.