Eritrea - Ministry of Information

Nowadays our movie houses seem to have taken fancy to video films made in Eritrea by Eritreans. Long are gone the days of theatrical plays. What happened? Maybe it is easier to transport videos than a group of actors with their accoutrements. And stage actors may get ill and miss rehearsals. It is difficult to get a replacement soon. The understudy, under pressure of the shining light, usually tends to mess things up.

After being linked with a host of Europe’s top clubs, including Spanish giants Real Madrid, as well as Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, and Juventus, Swedish-Eritrean football prodigy Alexander Isak completed a €10m move to Borussia Dortmund from AIK Solna last week. The tall, wiry 17-year-old striker, dubbed the “new Zlatan Ibrahimovic”, had recently become the youngest goal scorer in the history of the Swedish national team after netting in a 6-0 win against Slovakia on 12 January 2017.

Alexander Isak has had a week to remember. He made his debut against the Ivory Coast on Sunday, becoming the second-youngest player ever to turn out for the national team.

Eritrean Nguse Amlesom captured commanding victory at Madrid’s San Silvestre Vallecana, an IAAF Silver Label Road Race, on the New Year eve, frustrating what could be the first Spanish victory in 13 years.

It’s Sunday morning in the out streets of Beit Gergish, just out of Asmara. Sitting behind the wheel of small import cars with engines revving are five young men & one woman staring each other down. Their feet poised over the gas pedals, they anxiously await the checkered flag to set them off to the abyss of speed racing. When the flag waves, the car is dropped into gear, the pedal is slammed to the floor and the cars are quickly off, screeching their tires and sending up clouds of dust.

Eritrea’s Ghirmay Ghebreslassie won the New York City Marathon, among the world’s pre-eminent long-distance annual running events, with a time of 2 hours, 7 minutes, 51 seconds, finishing over a minute ahead of Kenya’s Lucas Rotich, who took second place, and Somali-born American Abdi Abdirahman, who finished third. Although it was only his race debut and though confronted by challenging, windy conditions, Ghirmay’s time qualified him as the third-fastest runner in the marathon’s 46-year history. The 20-year-old Eritrean also made history as the race’s youngest-ever male winner, breaking the record previously held by Alberto Salazar (1980), Tom Fleming (1973), and Sheldon Karlin (1972), who all won as 22-year-olds.