The Village Next To Paradise

In his debut film The Village Next to Paradise, the first Somali film ever to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival, director Mo Harawe focuses on a family trying to make the best of a bad situation. Caught between dream and drone. That is how you could describe the life of single father Mamargade and his clever son Cigaal. They live in a remote village on the Indian Ocean, complete with white sandy beaches bathed in an idyllic blue sky. Yet there is a constant threat of doom in the air of their small Somali village: the war on terror means there is always a risk of a drone attack. Young Cigaal shares his imaginative dreams with anyone who will listen, while Mamargade's divorced sister Araweelo is eager to buy a sewing machine so she can open a shop. In this quietly stunning debut, three characters walk their own paths, perhaps not to paradise, but to something close to it.