In the 1960s, Lilly, a British girl, is raised as a Muslim at a Sufi shrine in Morocco after being abandoned there by her parents. As a young woman in the early 1970s, she is sent to Harar, Ethiopia, where she falls in love with a doctor named Aziz, but they are separated when the Ethiopian Civil War begins.[3]
Lilly escapes as a refugee to England. There she befriends Amina, a traumatized fellow refugee who moves in with her. Lilly works as a nurse's aide at a hospital, where a kind doctor named Robin befriends her, but she resists his romantic interest as she hopes to be reunited with Aziz. She and Amina found an association to aid fellow refugees in reunifying their scattered families.
Amina and her two children are reunited with her husband, who has been in an Ethiopian prison, and they move to Canada, but Lilly is shattered to learn that Aziz was executed. Robin helps her recover and she shares her story with him, telling him that she had been told her parents died of drugs.
Sweetness in the Belly holds a 40% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 10 reviews, with an average of 6.6/10.[12]
The film received backlash for Dakota Fanning portraying the lead role in the film.[13] Amid whitewashing allegations, Fanning took to social media to share more details about her character. "Just to clarify. In the new film I'm part of, Sweetness in the Belly, I do not play an Ethiopian woman", the actress wrote in a message on her Instagram Story. "I play a British woman abandoned by her parents at seven years old in Africa and raised Muslim."[14]
