Somalia: UNHCR Somalia Hosts Movie Premiere

By Dickson Soire,

The much-anticipated movie, A hijacking premiered on Friday at the Planet Cinema in Westgate, Westlands, Nairobi. It was meant to be screened earlier on June 19 to commemorate the World Refugee Day but an attack by Al Shabaab militants on the UN embassy in Mogadishu on the same day saw it postponed to the later date.

Based on a true story, the movie follows the story of seven crew members of a Danish Cargo Ship MV Rozen that was hijacked in 2007 in the Indian Ocean. They went through four months of terror waiting for the negotiators to strike a deal with the pirates.

Andy Needham, from UNHCR said the movie is intended to show the plight of hostages and how everything can change for a family in under one minute. He pointed out that the Somali pirates are just young boys who are looking for their daily bread but are pushed by lack of education and property to become pirates.