Paradise village: a way to talk about Somalia
Daniel Nelson
Cinema provides a platform to talk about Somalia, its unknown problems, and its universal realities, says Mogadishu-born director Mo Harawe.
“Furthermore, I am motivated to participate in the growing but still very small film infrastructure present there,” he adds. “With The Village Next to Paradise, I want to create a story that tries to understand this nation as a whole, in all its complexity, from the perspective of an average family in a village and their links to the problems the country faces, both internal and external – and all this from some distance, in a kind of undramatic, pragmatic tone.”
He has done so, wonderfully well.
The Village Next To Paradise tells, slowly and slightly protractedly, the story of Mamargade, a gravedigger and driver, his sister Araweelo, who having divorced her husband would like to start a tailoring business, and his son Cigaal.
Harawe takes his time to tell the story of this household, and challenges us to do the same, to wait for sentences and thoughts to be completed, for situations to explain themselves.
The story is touching and the dilemmas of everyday life are real: the precariousness of small jobs, what to do with a young child when you have to go to work, the closure of the village school, coping with new technologies - such as mechanical diggers to replace the shovel for burials.
Conversation tends to be sparse and direct, emotions are handled with enormous reserve, business is done on trust, personal ambitions are constantly blocked by lack of money or conflicting interests ("My whole life I try to make things better," says Mamargade, "but I keep making mistakes."). Gradually, a picture of a family, and of the community in which it functions, comes into focus. Glimpses of wider national problems intrude, in the form of drone attacks, reference to a river poisoning, and weapons hidden in the back of a truck.
It’s fascinating and absorbing.
The Village Next to Paradise is showing at the BFI London Film Festival