The movie is to demonstrate Ethiopian journey of refuge . So to gain sympathy they made the lead actor white so for the whites to start putting themselves in her shoes . Now doing so is some sort of a slap on the face of the audience , like "you would have never watched it or felt sorry for her if she was black" . So basically that move kind of back fires as in white audience feel offended and misjudged and black audience feel ripped off from what should have been a black role , so bottom line this thing would neither win an award , nor the heart of critics nor the heart of the audience . so its just money wasted by producers and time wasted by audience .