Zeudi Araya - Eritrean Women In Popular Culture

For a people who are often faced with the question “where are you from again?”, Zeudi was one of the first Eritreans to gain mass western exposure and consequently introduce Eritrea to a wider audience. Her career in Italian Mondo films from the early 1970s to the mid 1980s cemented her as a focal point in Italian cinema, while her photoshoots and magazine spreads made her a face known to almost all Eritreans worldwide. 

The myth of Zeudi Araya – what she represents and name she has made for herself – shines a light on the stark difference in perspective between two different generations of Eritreans. There are those who were coming into adulthood as Zeudi’s career was at its height and those from a much younger generation who have only come to learn about Zeudi recently through social sites like Instagram and Tumblr. Thus, Zeudi’s legacy within the Eritrean community is gaining admiration with each subsequent generation and conversely losing its ability to generate controversy as time passes. 

But first —who is Zeudi Araya? 

Zeudi, 16, after being crowned “Miss Ethiopia”

Zeudi Araya is an actress and producer born in Dekemhare, Eritrea in 1951. She is the daughter of an Eritrean politician who was the governor of a province in Eritrea. As a result of her father’s high position, Zeudi was in a wealthier class of Eritreans and spent her earlier teenage years studying to become a surveyor at exclusive Italian schools in Asmara. When she was around the age of 16, Zeudi won a beauty pageant and was crowned “Miss Ethiopia”, a title that would prize her with an exclusive trip to Rome. In a 2006 interview Zeudi remarked, “Ed era un mio sogno venire qui. Anche perché io studiavo in una scuola italiana e quindi dell’Italia avevo studiato abbastanza ed è stato un bell’incontro”, expressing that it was a dream of hers to come to Italy and that her formal education at an exclusive Italian school in Eritrea made her trip to Rome all the better. 

She would eventually return to Eritrea from this trip, but would leave less than five years later to go back to Rome — this time permanently. It was during this trip that Zeudi was scouted for an Italian coffee commercial. Her age during this meeting is shrouded in mystery, with some having long maintained that she was only 18 rather than 21, as cited in other sources. Nevertheless, it was there on the set of the coffee commercial where she had a chance meeting with director Luigi Scattini – a film director and screenwriter who was widely known for his prominence in the Italian Mondo film industry. Scattini would direct Zeudi in La ragazza dalla pelle di luna; a successful Mondo film that would serve as Zeudi’s film debut and catapult her into the limelight.

Zeudi Araya with director Luigi Scattini (left) and composer Piero Umiliani (right) in studio.

Her role in Scattini’s films garnered controversy almost immediately within the Eritrean community. Her first film was released 12 years into the Eritrean War of Independence; a bloody and difficult time in Eritrean history. On the world stage, Eritrea was alone and without support. Not many knew of Eritrea’s revolutionary cause and those who knew did not seem to care. 

  This makes the character that Zeudi plays in her first film all the more controversial. Zeudi plays Simona – a black woman from Seychelles who falls in love with a married Italian man who had come to Seychelles on a vacation with his wife. The man, Alberto, embarks on an explicitly depicted affair with Simona before he returns to Italy with his wife (who had also decided to have an affair in Seychelles). 

The film was racy and erotic and glamorized an extra-marital relationship between a woman played by an Eritrean and a man played by an Italian. Interracial marriages, for both and Eritreans and Italians, were viewed as distasteful. Zeudi’s character in the film pursued Alberto only for him to return to his wife, making Zeudi’s character out to be the pursuer of the interracial relationship. 

Consequently, for many Eritreans of the time, it seemed like Zeudi was an Eritrean for Italians, not other Eritreans. Her image and likeness on screen were directed and produced by Italians and explicitly for the Italian male gaze. As one Eritrean interviewee remarked, Zeudi was an Eritrean for “those out there”. She played characters who were submissive and sexually vulnerable to Italians – a sharp contrast to Eritreans (specifically Eritrean women) who were at that very moment fighting for sovereignty and independence. 

However, it would be amiss to argue that it was only the timing of the release of Zeudi’s films with the Eritrean Revolution that made her controversial. Popular Eritrean notions of modesty and female sexuality of the time were also in direct opposition to Zeudi and her work. In her films and magazine photoshoots, Zeudi’s body was not hidden and her sexuality was at the forefront. The characters she played were not sexually naïve, nor were they embarrassed of the attention their body garnered them. 

Even now in 2021, a depiction of an Eritrean woman in this light remains controversial. Just looking at the comments from Eritreans on Eritrean-American rapper Rubi Rose’s music and imagery and it becomes evident that Eritrean conventions on female sexuality and modesty have only liberalized slightly. 

This is what makes the younger generation of Eritreans and their perspective of Zeudi Araya’s legacy so interesting. With newer fans of Zeudi, if there is a critique of Zeudi Araya’s films, it is of their glamorization of Italian colonization in East Africa – not necessarily of Zeudi’s appearance and acting as had been the primary critique with previous generations. For many young Eritreans, Zeudi is just Zeudi. She is a woman who wears what she wants to wear and lives how she cares to live. Her characters can be critiqued for being submissive, but Zeudi herself is independent. She resisted being tied down to what was expected of her. Instead, like many other Eritreans, Zeudi chartered a new path on her own. 

Her posters now line the walls of many young Eritreans in the diaspora who look up to Zeudi as an icon. While Italy’s relationship with its former colony is destructive and deserving of critique, it was never Zeudi’s aim or responsibility to challenge it.

She is an actress who just happened to be Eritrean and who just happened to have spent her youth in Asmara learning Italian and dreaming of Rome.