The award winning feature-length documentary A Walk to Beautiful tells the stories of five Ethiopian women who suffer from devastating childbirth injuries and embark on a 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. They make the choice to take the long and arduous journey to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in search of a cure and a new life.
Help support the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital that was featured in the film. The Fistula Foundation is dedicated to the treatment and prevention of obstetric fistula.
Learn more about Grace Village, the orphanage in Tigray that was featured in the film.
A Walk to Beautiful was truly a labor of love for everyone at Engel Entertainment. We staffed almost every field position with Engel Entertainment women, and our field crews even took months of lessons in Amharic, the Ethiopian language, from one of our interns who happened to be of Ethiopian descent.
Mary Olive Smith shot most of the footage of our characters in their villages. After much research and scouting, our crew went to Ethiopia for five total shoots over a two-year period, with the bulk of the shooting done in 2005.
The edit began in early 2006 with Andrew Ford, who has been editing for us for over five years. He was our natural choice to edit A Walk to Beautiful. However, everyone at Engel Entertainment participated in the editing process and helped to shape the story that you see on the screen.
And now, after a large number of twists and turns, A Walk to Beautiful is finished. It has been an incredibly rewarding experience and, we hope, audiences will be moved.