Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Mary McGuckian
Starring: Aja Naomi King, Martha Canga Antonio, Barkhad Abdi
We open upon exteriors of pastoral Northern Africa, an arcadia of lush
greens and hearty scrubland which soft focus cinematography blurs into
distorted memories: refracted light rainbowing playing children, with the
whimsical action bleeding into shadowy threat as a mysterious figure
arrives. The relative harmony of the scene is then ruptured by a smash cut
forward into the panicked streets of Mogadishu, where the lens,
unflinchingly clear now, depicts women and girls tearing through the city
on the run from men in jeeps who gleefully fire guns into the air.
As women fall, get shot and ominously disappear from the frame we focus in
on a 15-year-old girl, Ifrah Ahmed (Aja Naomi King), whose
measured, retrospective voiceover informs us that she is escaping from a
looming marriage to a 50-year-old paedophile during a time of civil
unrest: yeah, you would cut and run. Ifrah finds a place to hide in an
abandoned building. However, as is the female experience in turn of the
century Somalia, there is never any real withdrawal from violence and
terror. A group of ‘militias’ (ie, some thugs with weapons) find Ifrah and
rape her at gunpoint.
Now, I don’t want to NEEDLESSLY INFUSE A REVIEW WITH MY OWN PERSONAL
POLITICS OR ANYTHING, HEAVEN FORBID, but you can sort of see (go on
flag-wavers, squint a bit beyond your Daily Express) why someone would
want to leave such a brutal and seemingly hopeless set of circumstances
for literally anywhere else in the world. And so Ifrah, leaving behind the
culture and language she knows, embarks on the terrible life and death
lottery of asylum seeking: the crowded buses, the faked passports, the
confusion and fear. Hoping to end up in the States, Ifrah goes to Ireland
by mistake, connecting with the fella from Captain Phillips (Barkhad Abdi, not Tom Hanks) who more or less dumps her in a half-way house. Sight
& Sound style plot synopsis? No, first 10 minutes. We haven’t even
properly started yet. The pile on of misery is raw and excessive, but it
is a necessary exposition which sets a foundation for the real-life
triumphs of Ifrah, in Mary McGuckian’s handsomely produced biopic
of this phenomenal human being.
As we speak, Ahmed is the Gender Advisor to the Prime Minister of Somalia.
She has established the United Youth of Ireland, an NGO for young
immigrants, and the Ifrah Foundation, which is devoted to eliminating
Female Genital Mutilation. Back in the narrative though, Ifrah is
shivering from the polar cold of Dublin and communicating in hesitant
gestures because she has no English. A routine medical check (for HIV -
91% of the worlds' HIV infected children live in Africa) causes barely
disguised and (to me, at least) deeply unprofessional repulsion as Ifrah’s
genitalia turns out to be an (unscreened) manmade deformation. Completely
nonplussed at the reaction, Ifrah begins to understand what female genital
mutilation entails, and the dangers inherent in such archaic, controlling
rituals.
Following the indecent and sustained horror of the opening, what ensues in
A Girl from Mogadishu is the cheering, meticulously depicted
story of Ifrah’s self-actualisation from asylum seeker to cultural
iconoclast. Conflicts arise when Ifrah does return to Somalia, with its
regimes and stupid, barbaric rituals, but, essentially,
A Girl from Mogadishu is a hagiography of the purest and
most earned kind.
Now, if I was reviewing the subject of
A Girl from Mogadishu then this would be a five-star review:
a galaxy would not be enough. However, this is The Movie Waffler, not The
Decisive Cultural Change Converser, and so the limited narrative
opportunities afforded by the biopic, especially one as serious as this
which is morally bound to cleave to what actually happened, must be
observed. Thus, A Girl from Mogadishu is for the most part a
film in which one thing happens and then the next, reflecting the
inspirational, odds-defying rise and influence of Ifrah Ahmed. Portraying
Ahmed, King is beatific, with a smile like pure sunshine, but nonetheless,
while the events depicted are thrilling from a cultural point of view, as
a drama A Girl from Mogadishu is benignly episodic; a film
which is duty bound to relate events which are mercifully free of the
opening’s gruesome conflict.
A Girl from Mogadishu is on Amazon
Prime Video UK now.