A gravedigger, a seamstress and a child fight for their survival inside a ruthless society, in this achingly sorrowful and spellbinding drama from Somalia - from the Un Certain Regard section of the 77th Cannes International Film Festival
Director
Mo Harawe
Year of release
2024
Country
France Austria Somalia
Starring
Ahmed Mohamoud Salleban
Canab Axmed Ibraahin
Axmen Cali Faarax
Rating
"Filthy genius movie"
Key message
Treat children well and let them lead the way.
QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM CANNES
This startling remark is uttered by a character in The Village Next to Paradise, but it also doubles as a philosophy of sorts: “It doesn’t make sense to have children. There’s no future.” Desolation clings to the film: death is felt on every corner and frame. In this narrative, sorrow is woven into the fibres: one man’s grief is his son’s burden to carry.
Set in the rural Somalian heartland, the foreground depicts a desert terrain. Sand takes to the air, like dust directing victims to another life. A gravedigger by trade, Mamargade (Ahmed Ali Farah) deals with demise, as it covers both his expenses and experiences. He has a son Cigaal (Ahmed Mohamud Saleban), who lost a mother as a baby, and a sister Araweelo (Ana Ahmed Ibrahim), a precocious seamstress enduring prejudice due to her status as a divorced wife. The trio share the house, where they are subjected to the ever present threat of drone warfare.
A bastion of tradition and practice, Mamargade senses a shift in the workplace: machinery is taking over from physical labour. Cigaal’s centre of learning, run by donations and charity workers, is set to close; a common fixture in recent times. As luck would have it, the son boasts an intelligence that suits the educational sector, and Mamargade is encouraged to send his child to a prodigious boarding school in the town.
It makes sense: the location is further from artillery, and the establishment supplies food and shelter for the youngling. Araweelo has enough to worry about on her own, because the bank has declined her request for a mortgage; the rules dictate that it is meant for married women only. Moreover, there’s a British news anchor, reading out portraits of a country under attack, disregarding the love and determination that occurs across the triad’s native Somalia.
Each of these protagonists carries a purpose or truth, whether it is that of a child expressing his admiration for the only parent he has ever known, or a female torchbearer representing centuries placed on a luckless class of society. Mamargade is described as a person of limited intelligence, a grafter searching for a more meaningful outlet, but the more he tries to outdo himself, the grander the humiliation deepens. By the time he is accepted into a meeting, he is seated with someone younger, and less sympathetic to his personal situation. “An assistant role is the best I can do”, the manager replies, his eyes peering over the older, sadder worker. Whether by volition, or by accident, Mamargade has a habit of lying to everyone: including himself.
Araweelo considers a “sham marriage”, giving her a platform to purchase a store where can earn money of her own. She spies a man who is willing to go along with this charade, on the solemn promise that they will “divorce” as soon as everything is in order. Given the milieu, it is as good an offer as she is likely to get, happy with her lot. Family values light up the feature: in spite of all the carnage and negative energy, the triumvirate count their blessings whenever they return to prayer. The Village Next to Paradise is a triumph of artistry, and in its efforts to celebrate the human spirit, director Mo Harawe delivers something fragile and frail in equal order. Harawe’s mission is to illustrate the bond of blood relations: together in the heat, the jubilation and anguish.
“We will face it as a family,” Araweelo tells her sibling, the one note of confidence he has. Mamargarde worries for his son: the town’s children are taught manoeuvres on how to avoid a drone. Somewhere in that adolescent is the remnant of a woman he dearly loved, and the thought of losing the boy is too awful for words. Cigaal, a child with a vivid imagination that results in dreams of esoteric depth and detail, grows infinitely more grounded when he attends the new school. Upset that his guardian forgets to collect him one Friday, the boy’s reality is shaken the moment he encounters an orphan with nary a person for company. Sadness may hang over Cigaal’s clan, but loneliness is not in their vocabulary.
Ibrahim delivers an internalised and meticulously controlled performance as the aunt/sister. Intriguingly, Araweelo becomes a surrogate mother figure for both males. An actress of meticulous calibre, Ibrahim can do a lot with silences, pauses and blank stares. Watch how Araweelo reacts during the divorce hearings: the one compromise her spouse was willing to make for her was to marry another woman. Araweelo is fortunate in that she already has another base to build on, one where she is loved, and appreciated for the person, not the gender, she is. The success of The Village Next to Paradise is that it contradicts the aforementioned quote regarding reproduction. Based on this core unit, it definitely makes vital sense to have children. Infants simply are the future.
The Village Next to Paradise is showing in the Un Certain Regard section of the 77th Cannes International Film Festival.
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