Asad is a short film written and directed by famed commercial director Bryan Buckley of Hungry Man Films. The film received an Academy Award nomination on 10 January 2013, landing it one step closer to film’s highest honor: an Oscar.
Asad centers on the title character, a 12-year-old lad in a war-torn fishing village in Somalia. Asad must decide between falling into the pirate life or rising above it to choose the path of an honest fisherman.
The project was sparked in part by a United Nations short documentary, No Autographs, which brought Buckley and his producer Mino Jarjoura to refugee camps in Kenya and Sudan in the summer of 2010.
Buckley and Jarjoura encountered Somali refugees in Kakuma, Kenya. “Their stories and their outlook on life haven’t been fully told and haven’t gained the exposure they deserve,” Buckley said at a screening during the TriBeCa Film Festival. He noted that media have a fascination with the Somali pirates and to a lesser extent with the Al-Shabaab [Islamic extremists] group in the Southern territory of Somalia but as a result the spirit of the everyday people themselves gets overlooked.
Buckley wrote a script in an attempt to do justice to the humanity of the Somali people. Lensing in Somalia would have been too dangerous a prospect, so the short was brought to longtime friend and colleague Rafiq Samsodien to shoot in South Africa.
The film, spoken in Somali (with English subtitles), stars two young leads: Harun (14) and Ali (12), both Somali refugees. They reside just outside Cape Town, South Africa with their parents and 13 brothers and sisters. Neither boy spoke English nor had they ever attended school, so they were illiterate. Buckley and Jarjoura had to deploy a translator and the youngsters had to memorize their Somali lines sans a script or written point of reference.
These reading challenges kept them from being eligible for any type of formal schooling in South Africa. The filmmakers were diligent in looking for alternate options and were able to set up a special school, just for the boys. They finance a full-time tutor for the boys and they attend daily lessons in a make-shift school at the tutor’s house. All prize money Asad receives from festivals goes towards the boys’ school expenses. Since March 2012, the boys have gone from illiteracy to excelling in the fourth grade, in English.
“There are thousands of refugees just like these two boys who could achieve similar success if just given the chance,” Buckley has stated. This educational experiment has caught the eye of the South African government and the United Nations.
With Asad getting an Academy Award nomination, the goal is to get the boys to America for the Oscars.
“The Academy Awards is the ultimate platform for the world to take notice of the potential refugees have,” said Jarjoura. Like the many millions of refugees around the globe, Harun and Ali are not permitted to travel without special permission. The filmmakers are now trying to find a way to make it possible for them to make this historic visit.
Watch below a 17 minutes 20 seconds film Directed by Bryan Buckley. Set in a war torn fishing village in Somalia, an all Somali, refugee cast brings to life this coming of age fable of a Somali boy who is faced with falling into the pirate life, or rising above to choose the path of an honest fishing man.
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