Popular From Somalia

In the heart of rural Somalia, widowed mother Qalifo and her son, Asad, labor as camel herders. However, Asad has his heart set on a life in town with Ifrah, the girl of his dreams. When a young American visitor declares his love for Ifrah, the rivalry leads to murder, and Qalifo weighs in with a shocking choice that transforms all of their lives.

In one of the world's largest and oldest refugee camps, Dadaab, the inhabitans survive by watching films and dreaming. The refugees cannot leave the camp, but they let their minds escape the harsh reality: by going to the simple cinema hall run by Abdikafi Mohamed, the film's protagonist.

Young Alifa looks up at the somali sky. She thinks about her daily life as a shepherdess. She knows that the day that will change her life forever is about to come.

In Somalia, principled, young husband and father Abdi turns to piracy to support his family. While his wife and child wait for him in Yemen, an outdated and fragile satellite phone is his only connection to all he truly values. Abdi and his fellow pirates hit the high seas and capture a French oil tanker, demanding a hefty ransom. During the long, tedious wait for the cash to arrive, Abdi forges a tentative friendship with one of the hostages. When some of the pirates resort to violence, Abdi must make dramatic choices to determine his course.

When men take up arms to go against their brothers, women have to take up gravediggers’ shovels. Ceebla (Fardouza Moussa Egueh, who we also saw in Gravedigger’s Wife), refuses to bargain for the cost of her labour. When her grave finally finds a taker, the revenue logic takes an unexpected twist. The Earth Has Ears is a civil war film without gunfire. It shows how the absurdity of war also turns everyday life at the home front irrational. / MSFF

A coming of age fable of a Somali boy as he struggles to survive in his war-torn land.

How can you understand a violent past? Somali-born Abdi is furniture designer and support worker. He reenacts his life, marked by war and criminality, with the help of his neighbor and filmmaker Douwe. By means of playful reconstructions in a special effects studio, Abdi and Douwe embark on a candid and investigative journey through a painful history, focusing on the creative process throughout.

In a Somali village, Barni, a mysterious hitwoman in her fifties, dramatically resurfaces years after vanishing without a trace. There, she's intent on getting revenge on vicious gangster Ardo, who rules the village with an iron fist.

Prima and Lebsi are two young Afro-descendant women who grew up on the outskirts of Lisbon, daughters of immigrants who occasionally meet at a house party, on Cousin's birthday. Lebsi dates Rave, a young street dancer who makes a living dancing in the streets of central Lisbon, and they have a daughter in common. Prima is an orphan of both her father and mother and learned to let go of herself very early on. She lives alone with a cat and found selling cannabis as her alternative to generating money and paying the bills. Still, she is also a respected beat producer in the neighborhood. Both want to improve their lives, they dream of getting out of the “zone” but in the meantime they are living as best they can, asserting themselves in their way.

Dhalinyaro tells the story of three 18-year-old high school girls, coming from different social classes, rooted in their culture but also turned to the outside thanks to the new technologies.

Somalia. A policewoman sits in her parked car. After a while, she gets out, puts on her service cap, and enters the prison. There, decisive hours have dawned for young Farah. Organizational machinery starts up around him. Farah is examined by a doctor, instructed by the bailiff, and looked after by an imam. Farah is waiting for his parents to visit. “How are you?” is the question everyone asks him that day. Each time, “Good” is his concise answer. Only when the policewoman takes Farah out of town the next morning does the unspeakable become a painful reality.

The sequel to the 2021 film Guled & Nasra. Plot TBA.

Burta Djinka was a short film from Djibouti, directed by G. Borg, notable as an early local filmmaking effort in the country, telling a story in the Somali language as the nation developed its cinema scene before independence.

A man, obsessed with a young woman, becomes addicted to the movement of a snake and stalks the young woman, trying to impregnate her.

Centering on the revolutionary Dervish State and its influential leader, Muhammad Abdullah Hassan (the "Mad Mullah") is an epic on the grandest scale. The film follows Hassan's life from his roots as a humble mullah to a revolutionary anti-colonial leader that fought off the British Empire for more than two decades.

In a small town, a nomad cuts down a tree he needs to use. However, he accidentally chops down the wrong tree, felling the tree that sustains life itself. When the latter tree falls, all life disappears. The nomad then finds himself in the middle of a desert that he does not recognize, and he tries to work his way out of it. During this particular quest, he comes across a small tree that is in the process of dying and opts instead to save this one.

Jama and Samira are newly married and very happy, but when Jama's friend Yonis show up and claim that Samira is a dangerous killer, it changes everything.

Somalia's first full-length feature film.

Smuggling and illegal migrant is a national disaster that destroyed all goals and hopes of the Somaliland teenagers/youth which cause a very critical hard situation of our life.

Qabyo 2 is the quintessential example of the sequel being better than the original. Written and directed by, and starring, a legendary cast of multi-hyphenated Somali artists, this cult classic combined unconventional filmmaking techniques, kinetic editing and a fascinating interpretation of mise en scène that’s since become an easily digestible visual grammar for its intended audience. This bombastic socio-comic musical about diaspora and assimilation in America ushered in a new era of national cinema that followed the Somali cinematic tradition’s steadfast belief in the ‘by us, for us’ philosophy.