[4] As he stated to Los Angeles Times: "When I was growing up, I wanted to work in theater—it never occurred to me I could be a filmmaker because I was raised on Hollywood movies that pacified me to be subservient.

[1] By the time Haile graduated in 1976, he had made four films:[7] Hour Glass (1972); Child of Resistance (1972); Bush Mama (1976); and Mirt Sost Shi Amit (also known as Harvest: 3,000 Years; 1976) Gerima's 1976 Bush Mama is the story of Dorothy and her husband T.C., a discharged Vietnam veteran who anticipated a hero's welcome on his return.

For the production of Mirt Sost Shi Amit (Harvest: 3,000 Years)[8] Haile returned to his native Ethiopia.

Gerima met his future wife and a Detroit native, Shirikiana Aina while she was attending at Howard University.

[10] Haile discusses his movie Ashes and Embers in an interview, "presented in collaboration with ARRAY, the rebirth of the African American Film Festival Releasing Movement (AFFRM)"[11] at the Schomburg Center.

The story is revealed through the eyes of Mona, a modern-day woman who is possessed by spirits and transported to the past as Shola, a house slave on the Lafayette plantation in Louisiana.

The filmmaker suggests questions about the direction of the succeeding government and the will of the people in creating institutions guaranteeing their liberation.

Adwa: An African Victory (1999) is a documentary drama of the history of the 1896 battle, which concluded the war in which the Ethiopian people united to defeat the Italian army.

Set in Ethiopia and Germany, the film chronicles the return of an Ethiopian intellectual to his country of birth during the repressive Marxist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam and the recognition of his own displacement and powerlessness at the dissolution of his people's humanity and social values.

After several years spent studying medicine in Germany, Anberber returns to Ethiopia only to find the country of his youth replaced by turmoil.

His dream of using his craft to improve the health of Ethiopians is squashed by a military junta that uses scientists for their own political ends.