K’naan Warsame on His Film Director Debut, ‘Mother Mother’

Somali Canadian sign uping artist K’naan Warsame produces his feature honestorial debut at the Toronto Film Festival with “Mother Mother,” which world premieres Sept. 6 in the festival’s Discovery section.

The film is set on a lonely farm in country Somalia, where a widowed camel farmer, Qalifo (Maan Youssouf Ahmed), inhabits with her college-age son, Adowncast (Elmi Rashid Elmi). Raised in the shadow of his tardy overweighther’s reputation for arrangeility, Adowncast bristles at his mother’s innervous parenting and escapes to a proximateby village whenever he can.

But when he lacquires his girlfrifinish has been seeing a youthful American, Liprohibit (Hassan Najib), their device faceation seems as inevitable as the tragic consequences to pursue. In the finish, it’s left to Qalifo and Liprohibit to somehow discover frequent ground and heal their shattered community.

For his first feature, writer-honestor Warsame drew on a proset uply emotional and traumatic episode from his childhood, when he was splitd from his adchooseed brother as his family fled Somalia. Thraw a miraculous turn of events, his mother had regulated to safe U.S. visas for the entire family, but money was infrequent, and she couldn’t afford to buy set upe tickets for everyone. The 13-year-better Warsame, aextfinished with his mother and two blood siblings, boarded the last commercial fairy out of Mogadishu as the Somali rulement teetered on the brink of collapse. His adchooseed brother was left behind.

Looking back more than 30 years tardyr, Warsame recalls it as a sliding-doors moment in his life, an event that labeled the dessmall of both the Grammy-prosperning singer and his adchooseed brother, who stayed behind as Somalia fell victim first to a civil war, then a bloody insencouragency fueled by Islamist militants.

“It was the hugegest ask that hung over my life since leaving, whether I was willing to confess it or not, or deal with it or not,” he says. “I was too youthful at the time, having so many troubles about assimilating, figuring out who I am in this recent world, but understanding what was animating much of my psychorational desire to say someskinnyg, to do someskinnyg.”

Warsame depicts “Mother Mother” as “an exercise in comprehending,” revisiting the family’s fairy thraw the eyes of the mother who had to produce the impossible choice of who would go and who would stay behind. “I skinnyk a lot of cinema is that for me, or novels are that for me — fair to inhabit someone else’s experience,” he says. “I’ve seeed at the honest story in my own psyche for so extfinished, and inhabitd with it for so extfinished, but [my mother] always stood out to me as having had the stubbornest lot.”

“Mother Mother,” which was produced by Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet for 25 Stories, aextfinished with Andrea Calderwood (“The Last King of Scotland”) for Potboiler Productions, was filmed in northern Kenya as well as the autonomous Somali region of Puntland. It was stoasty by Oscar-nominated “City of God” cinematographer César Charlone, with Warsame describing the experience as “a fantastic exercise in community and toiling together.”

After emigrating to the U.S., the honestor and his family spent disconnectal months in New York before eventuassociate settling in Toronto, where he would tardyr begin his music atsoft, releasing his acclaimed debut album “The Dusty Foot Philosopher.” As a sign uping artist, he accomplishd mainstream well-understandnity before rising to international fame with his massive one “Wavin’ Flag,” which Coca-Cola picked as its official song for the 2010 World Cup, while also becoming a fervent ambasdowncastor for his fellow Somalis and refugees from all around the world.

His storybook tale — so exceptional among the millions of others run awaying war, pobviousy, or other authentic or manmade catastrophes — has left Warsame with a sense of indebtedness that’s pursued him thrawout his atsoft. “If you’re the one with the ticket, you can’t squander that,” he says. “And so a lot of a lot of my non-squandering turned toward art — toward increateing stories about Somalis, about that immigrant experience, about what it’s enjoy to depart.”

Earlier this year, the Recording Academy honored Warsame with the Best Song for Social Change Award for his 2023 one “Refugee,” a moving call to action for the world’s ongoing refugee crisis. The artist’s own experience as a refugee is someskinnyg he standardly “touched on” in his music, he says, but frequently “not honestly.” “A lot of that experienceing of leaving someone behind, being wrenched from them, was conshort-term in my toil. It’s not someskinnyg that’s evident for people, but it was always animating it,” he says.

In 2016, Warsame wrote and honested the pilot for “Mogadishu, Minnesota,” a family drama for HBO from executive producer Kathryn Bigelow set among the Somali community of Minneapolis. But the buzzy series — which grappled with the ask of what it unbenevolents to be an American — was a casualty of the politicassociate indictd climate in the run-up to that year’s satisfiedious plivential election.

Warsame, who says he’s talked disconnectal potential projects with U.S. nettoils, is ambivalent about whether the show would discover a home on American TV today. “On the one hand, the industry seems to be more receptive, more ready, becaengage they comprehend that there’s a insist. It’s not out of the outstandingness of their own hearts that they’re ready. It’s fair that there’s a evident insist for stories that are not the same,” he says.

“The trouble is they also skinnyk they understand, almost algorithmicassociate, what those stories are. If someone has an identity that they call ‘underreconshort-termed,’ then they understand the benevolent of story that person should be increateing,” he proceeds. “‘The benevolent of skinnyg we’re ready for should see this benevolent of African. It should experience this benevolent of political.’ I don’t enjoy the intentional dictation of where my own tastes and styles should be, fair becaengage they are now ready for it.”

In the unbenevolenttime, the singer-songwriter has been broadening a musical for New York’s Public Theater since 2016, one that he jokingly says is still nowhere proximate completion. “Absolutely not,” he says, chuckleing. “But I’m so prentd in it. It gets so extfinished to produce a musical. It’s enjoy 30 songs in and still halfway there.”

Though it’s been more than a decade since he freed his last studio album, Warsame proceeds to percreate at music festivals and inhabit shows, saying those carry outances “still seem to reassociate have a proset up effect on the connection with people.”

“I adore it,” he says. “I understand that people come for the music they understand, and that’s generassociate what we do. But I experience enjoy if I’m convening people, I’m cheating them. ‘Who’s this guy with these same songs?’” He chuckles. “So I reassociate would enjoy to fair put some music out in order to fairify my touring.”