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“A Girl from Mogadishu”
\nDirector\/Writer: Mary McGuckian
\ncast: Aja Naomi King, Barkhad Abdi, Maryam Mursals<\/p>\n
Airs On Showtime, July 15th, 2020<\/p>\n
Story by Brad Balfour<\/p>\n
In a world where black people are being killed by a policeman\u2019s knee to the throat, this film, “A Girl from Mogadishu,” and its core subject, female genital mutilation, has been dwarfed by other life and death issues exploding on the screen every day. Nevertheless, this concern is one of many reflecting the degradation that has forced women to rise up, take charge and call people out for such inhuman behavior.<\/p>\n
In Africa, Asia and the Middle East, the removal of the clitoris or other external female genitalia through ritual cutting takes place, often under very unsanitary conditions. Known as female genital mutilation (FGM) \u2014 also called female genital cutting and female circumcision \u2014 it is often justified as a necessary religious practice. Beside the obvious blunting of a woman\u2019s own physical pleasure, it can result in infection and fissure which damage proper bodily functions and cause severe pain and sometimes death. The practice has been outlawed in many countries, but the ritual is still performed regularly.<\/p>\n
Somali-born Ifrah Ahmed left Mogadishu (its capital city) in 2006 at age17 after war broke out. Evading traffickers, she made it to Ireland where she was granted refugee status. She later established the United Youth of Ireland, an NGO for young immigrants, and the Ifrah Foundation, which is devoted to eliminating Female Genital Mutilation.<\/p>\n
Once veteran film director Mary McGuckian got wind of Ahmed\u2019s story, she decided it provided the perfect grist for the mill of a feature film \u2014 which isn\u2019t an easy task given the grim subject and the difficulties of shooting in a foreign country. But the seasoned filmmaker has taken on tough challenges before. Hell, making any indie film based on a generally unfamiliar subject and relatively unknown actors offers considerable convolutions, from the twists and turns of financing to making a picture across several different countries and landscapes.<\/p>\n
McGuckian has worked on 12 films, including 2015\u2019s \u201cThe Price of Desire\u201d (about groundbreaking architect Eileen Gray which recently was awarded digital distribution), \u201cThe Bridge of San Luis Rey\u201d (which is gettinga a re-treat and re-release) and \u201cMan on the Train\u201d (which starred U2 drummer Larry Mullen). Shown at festivals worldwide, including Tribeca, Sundance, Venice, and London, McGuckian\u2019s films have won various awards.\u00a0 In 2009 she was the recipient of the Annual Achievement Award from the Women\u2019s International Film and Television Awards in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Starring Aja Naomi King, Barkhad Abdi and Maryam Mursals, \u201cA Girl from Mogadishu” tells of Irish Somali Ifrah Ahmed’s tough journey from her war-torn country to global activism against Female Genital Mutilation. It premiered at the 2019 Dublin International Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival and won the Audience Award at the 42nd edition of the Mill Valley Film Festival. And now it will be on Showtime, July 15th.<\/p>\n
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Q: \u201cA Girl From Mogadishu\u201d didn’t seem to get the attention it should have gotten.<\/p>\n
MM: We were just about to release it — it was due in March. It had just taken off, it won a lot of awards. It won two Audience awards, in Mill Valley in America, and in February it won the Center for Peace Foundation award at the Berlin Film Festival. We were about to release it on the 27th of March, and from the 8th of March we had to start canceling all the events.<\/p>\n
I think they sold it to Showtime in America, and it will come out in July in America\u00a0 rather than waiting for the theatrical run and then in Europe;\u00a0 in the UK, it’s going to come out in November.<\/p>\n
Q: I saw a documentary\u00a0 about a model who left Somalia and joined the fight against FGM. There\u2019s also the late Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene\u2019s final film, the 2004 feature Moolaad\u00e9, which addresses the subject.<\/p>\n
MM: This is about a wonderful Irish activist and is a subject that’s very close to my heart, the film is very strong. Actually, Orla [Brady, the lead of \u201cThe Price of Desire\u201d] appears in this movie as well.<\/p>\n
Q: There are some Irish organizations that have a strong footprint in Africa and India. But what really motivated you to tackle such a tough subject?<\/p>\n
MM: There\u2019s a line from the script that\u2019s key: \u201cSilence may be the rust on the razor with which they threatened to cut my throat, but it was not my tongue they cut.\u201d I can\u2019t claim credit for the entirety of the line \u2014 it\u2019s an intentional homage to Maya Angelou in a script written before Tarana Burke\u2019s #MeToo movement took off in the film world \u2014 but the power of testimony is the fundamental feminist tenet to which the film subscribes.<\/p>\n
This is the story of how Ifrah Ahmed came to understand, develop, and employ the most potent of campaign tools \u2014 her own true story \u2014 and use it to empower to an extraordinary effect. Not only [was it a] healing tool for her own trauma, but in became the \u201cvoice not the victim,\u201d she has contributed to the global campaign to end Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in a way that medical descriptions and statistical reports could never do.<\/p>\n
Q: What drew you to her story?<\/p>\n
MM: As a character, Ifrah herself is one of the most compellingly charismatic and awe-inspiring women it has been my privilege to know. This is clear to everyone who meets her from the get-go. Her drive, passion, and commitment to the global campaign to end FGM is second to none. She is multi-skilled and multi-talented and has phenomenal natural feminist credentials underpinned by the human rights empathy ingrained in her DNA.<\/p>\n
It is also clear that she will not stop campaigning until she has succeeded in her mission. She is also one of the kindest, funniest, cleverest, most beautiful young women you will ever meet, with a winning way and a killer smile. There was no doubt that writing, let alone playing Ifrah, was going to be a joy as well as a challenge. [Actor] Aja Naomi King rose to it with dedication, hard work, talent, and aplomb, and blew us all away from the moment she committed to prepare for the role.<\/p>\n
But first I had to figure out whether the story was one to which I could give authentic voice and whether there was a way to tell Ifrah\u2019s story that would be much more than the sum of its parts \u2014 more than a simple documentation of events. Yes, I\u2019m a woman. Yes, I am Irish, like Ifrah. But I have not undergone FGM, and as a female filmmaker from an arguably privileged white culture, participation in the project would require Ifrah\u2019s voice just as much as \u2014 if not more than \u2014 mine. [That\u2019s] how the story structure evolved, that of bearing witness, using Ifrah\u2019s testimony in the form of the speech she’s given so many times over her years of campaigning, to the most impactful effect at the European Commission. And out of that decision emerged the script\u2019s underlying thesis: the power of testimony.<\/p>\n
It is that testimony, filmed over two days and resulting in tens of hours of footage, that was the clincher. Not even the scale of the statistics after months of research revealing the trauma and health effects endured by the hundreds of millions of women who have undergone FGM, nor the tens of millions of young girls who remain at risk, surpass the impact of one young woman\u2019s personal account of the experience of undergoing female genital mutilation.<\/p>\n
The courage and openness of Ifrah\u2019s account is the most devastating testament to the inhumanity of this age-old patriarchal practice passed down from the times of the Pharaohs. It was not possible for me to do anything other than take on the project.<\/p>\n
Q: This isn\u2019t the first time you have had to rise to the occasion.<\/p>\n
MM: Like many female filmmakers, I had to leave Ireland for a period, and during that time I would have made films in Canada or the U.S. or the U.K. at a time when it was very male-centric and the films tended to be light.<\/p>\n
In a way, the Eileen Gray film was the first Irish film that I was able to make for many many years. And now there has been a big change in Ireland and a concerted effort by the Irish Film Board to proactively generate and create and import material for and by women. And this might have been one of the first of them under those incentives — and to make a film about an architect who was not recognized in her time and suffered [for it].<\/p>\n
So this has been a really big change for me. That’s what became an opportunity to, without subterfuge, actually pick out stories that were for, by and about women and that will be supported. That is a massive change. And to make a film about an architect — who was not recognized in her lifetime and suffered the insidious chauvinism of that age is to my mind a universal female experience and particularly known to be for architects and for filmmakers, there being so few — was a great privilege. And that wouldn’t have happened had Screen Ireland not been the way out of the bog and will continue the conversation around the representation of women behind the camera and on screen.<\/p>\n
Q: But you have made some other films uncharacteristic for a woman to make, like your sports movie.<\/p>\n
MM: The film is called \u201cBass,\u201d about the footballer George Bass. It’s been re-released. It was decided that in the absence of football they’d release a few football related movies, So there was a mad panic a couple of weeks ago.<\/p>\n
Q: And when there was no sports, they had to fill in with all the movies.<\/p>\n
MM: Exactly. So all the old movies are\u00a0basically getting an outing. We spent a year preparing to do a retrospective of Eileen Gray based on an exhibition that happened around the time we were making the movie. So there was a very slow resurgence of interest and recognition of Eileen Gray and her total work and her Irishness and her desire to be known as Irish.<\/p>\n
I remember — the person who re-discovered the house — a chap called Ricourt did a lot to pass the word, to recognize that e1027 was not a house designed by Le Corbusier but by Eileen Gray. And on her 98th birthday he rang her to say, \u201cOh my goodness, it’s two years’ time when you will be getting a telegram from the Queen!\u201d To which she responded, \u201cBut I’m an Irish Republican, didn’t you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Q: And what did he have to say to that?<\/p>\n
MM: He said,\u201dOh, gosh, I’m dreadfully sorry.\u201d I guess what he was trying to tell me was that even though she’d left Ireland when it was still under British rule, and she had a very long life, she considered herself Irish. And to be recognized again in Ireland as has happened over the last ten years. Around the time we were making a film during the exhibition called \u201cThe Rest of It,\u201d I happened on that list of great Irish artists from Bacon to O’Faolain on the wall in the airport. And then I saw one day Eileen Gray’s name appeared there as well. So we’ve reclaimed her, thankfully, again. She should be very pleased about that.<\/p>\n
Q: The economic situation is very different for the filmmaker now. I guess you’re dependent on television to keep you alive.<\/p>\n
MM: It’s changed. During that time, I made films in Canada, the U.S. or the UK where it was\u00a0 also very broadcast-centric. Even the George Bass movie was, seen over the Sky Network; his [following] is very European.<\/p>\n
Q: Now that there is more of a forum for you to express yourself, you have made three films about women, but not all of your films are about women.<\/p>\n
MM: I look back and to the extent that I was allowed, here’s the thing: I’m only trying to make films about female characters and to represent them reasonably onscreen. That is something you can always do in a period film. In contemporary films, it is more difficult. So you have to employ a bit of subterfuge. So I made a lot of films about issues, where the lead characters may appear to be men, but in actual fact they weren’t.<\/p>\n
In \u201cRag Tale,\u201d it looked and felt like the editors were lead characters — actually get to project a lead character as a lead character. And in Intervention and Inconceivable, they were in relationship therapy or — they were all issues that related generally to women’s sense of themselves. I managed by subterfuge to have the stories driven by women.\u00a0 And in making one of the lead characters a female writer-director.<\/p>\n
But only twice in my life did I — either out of expedience or possibly because I had a friend [that I made a film for the] YMG, young male genre. Which when I look back was rather extraordinary, they were very easy and quick to get off the ground. One was the George Bass story, the other was \u201cMan on the Train,\u201d and they were both made for friends to have parts.<\/p>\n
Q: There wasn’t a lot of press for “Man on the Train,” which was unfortunate because that was a coup to get him to do that film. I’ve actually interviewed both Donald Sutherland and him, but not for this movie.<\/p>\n
MM: The original was Jean Rochefort and Johnny Hallyday.<\/p>\n
Q: I was a fan —\u00a0Hallyday was the French Elvis.<\/p>\n
MM: Exactly! I talked for many hours to Larry [Mullen]. He expressed an interest in trying out acting but I didn’t suggest that we should make a movie. I just said the best example I had ever seen of a rock star really shining in a movie was “L\u2019Homme Du Train.” And the reason was because the film was carried not by Jean Rochefort, but because Johnny Hallyday was playing the character of the fugitive. Larry wanted to watch the movie because I said let’s do it. So Larry set about doing it.<\/p>\n
And again, it was not a difficult film relative to the time it takes to get off the ground. It also suffered from the same distribution thing. The company that we did the film with, we found out while we were making the film, was sold out to a bigger distributor. By the time we had finished, we were delivering it to a different company called Fiera Films in America, and they just weren’t interested in it. Which was a great shame, because it got rave reviews and Mullen was amazing in it. I think he was quite disappointed that it wasn’t taken more seriously.<\/p>\n
Q: Well, that’s a shame because he’s a nice guy, and talented overall.<\/p>\n
MM: Yes, he is.<\/p>\n