It is not only a very great first film by Khadar Ayderus Ahmed, but also the first feature film to represent Somalia at the Oscars. And “The Gravedigger’s Wife” is also the first work by a director born in Somalia to win the prestigious Gold Stallion at Fespaco at the largest pan-African film festival. This Wednesday, April 27, this incredibly touching Somali story is released in theaters in France.
Every day, Guled awaits death with particular seriousness and sincerity. He lives with his wife Nasra and his son Mahad in the poor districts of Djibouti, but he is a gravedigger and must be ready in front of the hospital entrance to dig the graves of others to earn a living. One morning, this question of life and death lurks around his own family…
“Telling my own version of Somalis”
This story comes straight from Somalia, a country of 15 million inhabitants in East Africa, rarely shown so believable in cinema. Khadar Ayderus Ahmed, born in 1980 in Mogadishu, before fleeing the country with his family at the age of 16 and taking refuge in Finland, tells us this tragic story with stunning beauty. ” I’ve seen so many films about Somalia made by Western filmmakers, but I couldn’t really identify with those films as a Somali. The way the Somali people were portrayed was completely different. I just wanted to tell my own version of Somalis, with humanity and dignity. »
[Vidéo] “The Gravedigger’s Wife,” A Crazy Somali Story by Khadar Ayderus Ahmed
In the film, Guled (Omar Abdi), the strong-willed and courageous young father, has to face an already very trying daily life as a gravedigger when he learns that his wife Nasra (Yasmin Warsame) is seriously ill. The necessary operation far exceeds the financial possibilities of the worker, as honest as he is poor. The only solution is to return to the village he had once left, because the village community had condemned his way of life in favor of love and freedom, and claim their share of the heritage.
The day of the funeral
His wife Nasra, a woman as beautiful as she is free and rebellious, concentrates in the film all the tensions between pure love and the constraints of tradition, between town and village, between health and poverty, between hope and belief…
” The story was inspired by a real event that happened in my family ten years ago. My brother’s baby passed away and we had an Islamic funeral ritual. The process was long and very exhausting. On the day of the funeral, my older brother asked me if I remembered how easy it was to bury someone in Somalia. I answered: no. He told me that there was always a team of gravediggers in front of the hospitals who did the job in two hours! Just like that. Then this gravedigger character literally haunted me. He followed me everywhere until I decided to sit down and write about him. To give him a voice. »
Beauty, modesty, finesse and silence
Through The Gravedigger’s Wife, the filmmaker puts the light captured by his camera at the service of wisdom and humanity transcending poverty. The eyes and gestures of bodies and hearts subtly advance the actions on screen towards the only true treasure of human beings, love. Beauty, modesty, finesse and silence are the hallmarks of this unconditional love which excludes all misery and gives birth to hope and strength for a fight in the service of life.