Mother Mother, a film by Somalian filmmaker K’naan Warsame, has won the FIPRESCI Jury Award at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. The award was presented, alongside others, on September 15, and makes Mother Mother the only African film to leave the 2024 edition of TIFF with an award.
Other African films that debuted at the festival include The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos and Freedom Way, both by Nigerian filmmakers.
The FIPRESCI Prize is given by an international jury picked by the International Federation of Film Critics. Its TIFF winner tells a story about a young Somalian camel farmer and the American visitor he learns is seeing his girlfriend.
Other winners include Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck, which took the festival’s biggest prize, the People’s Choice Award. Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez, which premiered in Cannes and won a prize there, came in second place. Anora, Cannes’s Palme D’Or winner, came in third. All three films would be expected to pick Oscar nominations ahead of next year’s ceremony.
The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal, by Mike Downie, won the People’s Choice Documentary Award, TIFF’s biggest prize for non-fiction. In second place was Josh Greenbaum’s Will & Harper, which follows actor Will Ferrell and his best friend on the latter’s transition journey. Ali Weinstein’s Your Tomorrow was the category’s second runner-up.
Another Cannes-winning picture, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, was the big winner in the People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award category. First runner up was John Hsu’s Dead Talents Society; second runner-up was Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship.
“Nobody wants to insure the movie, if you are going to shoot in Somalia”
In naming Warsame’s Mother Mother winner of the FIPRESCI Award, the jury said, the film “depicts a humanistic approach towards a revenge narrative set in a country haunted by violence and grief.
“The film is remarkable in its non-sensationalist treatment of contentious politics through its parallels of the human and the natural world. Warsame’s feature debut, through its compelling formal attributes and charismatic acting, conveys a sense of hope and healing after tragedy.”
In an interview conducted at TIFF, Warsame spoke about the difficulty in filming his debut in his home country. “Nobody wants to insure the movie, if you are going to shoot in Somalia,” he said, adding, “There’s literally not one single company in the world who says yes to insuring in Somalia.
“It’s like off their list. That took a lot of work…Finally we got a partial acceptance from the insurance and bonding companies and security companies to be able to shoot some of it in Somalia.”
Warsame (as K’naan) is more popularly known as a musician after his 2009 single ‘Waving Flag’ was chosen as Coca Cola’s promotional song for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. At the 2024 Grammys in February, he won an award for his song ‘Refugee’. He is based in Canada.
