Double Feature: "Somalia in Motion"

The second LIFELINES edition focuses on Nuruddin Farah, acclaimed as one of Africa’s greatest contemporary writers and regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Together with Nuruddin Farah, LIFELINES explores his biographical and literary paths in an exchange with friends and fellow-writers past and present.

22 h Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon

D: Khalo Matabane, South Africa 2005, 80 min, English subtitles

An impressive investigation into and indictment of the impact of war and displacement where the borders between fiction and factare deliberately blurred. Keniloe, a young poet in Johannesburg, relaxes in the park – reading Nuruddin Farah’s “Maps”. He gets into a conversation with Fatima, who has fled from the horrors in Somalia. He decides to use her experiences as the basis for a book. But suddenly, she disappears. Keniloe, equipped with a video camera, sets about finding her.

24 h AMBAD – Lost

D: Abdisalam Aato, USA 2009, 87 min, English subtitles

A tragic story of hope, triumph and redemption from “Somaliwood”, the film industry popular both in Somalia and among the Somali diaspora. The story of Darman Abtidoon is told as a lifedrama: a young Somali, born into the brutal realities of Mogadishu, ends up scratching a living on the streets of Ohio.

In co-operation with Suhrkamp Verlag