Mo Harawe revives Somalian cinema with “The Village Next to Paradise”

It takes some time to understand and grasp the ties that bind the three characters in The Village Next to Paradise, Mo Harawe’s first feature film, presented at Un Certain Regard. A father, Mamargade, his son, Cigaal, and a sister and aunt, Araweelo, are gathered under the same roof, somewhere in a small village in the Somali desert. The way in which the filmmaker lets us approach them without forcing a meeting says a lot about a film into which we enter, as if crossing the threshold of an unfamiliar but soon friendly house...