2.Main Content
Digi Shorts
Mohamed Ali
Mohamed Ali was born in Somalia, living there as a child until the outbreak of civil war in 1990. After three years of surviving the shelling of the city, the slaughter of people and the destruction of the community and neighbourhood, his family like many others, fled Somalia.
After seven years in Ethiopia living with his family, learning the Amharic language, and being schooled in the Koran, Mohamed was forced to leave his family to make his way to Europe with his younger sister.
In London by 2000, his questioning attitude and reactions to these experiences soon left him homeless.
After the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers from London to other parts of the UK, Mohamed was sent to Bristol. He has lived in the city since 2001 where he writes poetry, produces music with other young people, and has been making films since 2006.
Mohamed has been selected onto the Digital Shorts Scheme with a documentary project
A short documentary about a move to start a new life, this re-counts the journey of a Somali teenager in 2001, one amongst thousands of people being dispersed across Europe and the UK.
This is a road movie from London to Bristol that shows how one seemingly simple journey from London to Bristol can be fraught with confusion and bafflement. It’s about the confusion of the yet another new place, with unfamiliar language, culture and systems, which he must get to grips with.
The movement of one young man over bus, underground, coach, and foot, highlights his feeling as a badly labeled package being sent from place to place. Through voice, reconstruction and visualisation, the film also aims to address some of the popularly held misconceptions about immigrants and asylum seekers, who come to receive their big house, mobile phone and car from the English tax-payer.