Our first film from Somalia and unsurprisingly, I've never heard of this. My expectations for African films are generally quite low - possibly unfairly but it's generally a case that I don't have any frame of reference for the action or plot (or sometimes there actually isn't any action or plot for me to apply a frame of reference to). But here we go again anyway...
Well, the environment is very alien to me but at least I can relate to the plot. Guled (Omar Abdi) is struggling to find enough money to keep his family supported but yet he has to find $5000 to pay for his wife Nasri (Yasmin Warsame) to have an operation to save her life. But after trying various things, there's nothing for it - he's going to have to go and see his family. So he sets out for his home village leaving their son Mahad (Kadar Abdoul-Aziz Ibrahim) to look after his wife.
And what follows is a surprisingly emotional tale - it's certainly not intricately plotted. But I was drawn right in to it and I was desperately hoping for a happy ending. And of course I'm not going to tell you whether that happened, but I will say the film didn't end in the way I was expecting, although I do deem it to be satisfactory!
It's pretty well acted - it's really Omar Abdi's film to carry and he does a good job, although I was somewhat disconcerted by his vague resemblance to Kiell Smith-Bynoe from Ghosts. Yasmin Warsame and Kadar Abdoul-Aziz are sparingly used, but their scenes together in the back half of the film are done well.
It's all very well filmed with particularly good use of light - several of the scenes reminded of Moonlight and I don't really think there's much higher praise you can give any film! Additionally, the shots are often well composed (particularly on Guled's journey to his village) - you can tell some thought has gone into them so well done to the director, Khadar Ayderus Ahmed (Wikipedia tells me he's Finnish-Somalian, which is quite the mix!). Wikipedia also informs me this was the first Somali film to be put forward for the Academy Awards - it certainly feels worthy of wider publicity.
All in all, this was, as The Guardian put it, a "gentle, funny drama" - it's a tale that slowly draws you in and makes you stay to the end. I can't, in all honesty, demand that you seek it out but if you stumble across it, then there are far worse ways to spend your time. Having said that, at time of writing, it's only available to rent on BFIPlayer, so I suspect it's unlikely you'll stumble across it - but you never know.
