Hiiraan Online

Khadar Ayderus Ahmed attends 'The Gravedigger's Wife' photocall at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, where his film won the Amplify Voices Award. Getty Images / AFP

LONDON, United Kingdom (HOL) — Somali director Khadar Ayderus Ahmed, who brought international acclaim to East African cinema with his Cannes-debut feature The Gravedigger’s Wife, is preparing his next film: a genre-bending tale about a middle-aged Somali hitwoman returning to her village to confront the crime boss who once drove her away.

The new project, Thundering Smoke, will be unveiled next week at Finnish Film Affair, an industry showcase running alongside the 38th Helsinki International Film Festival – Love & Anarchy, from Sept. 24–26.  The team hopes to attract festival interest, sales partners, and financing as the project moves through development.

Set in a remote Somali village, the film centers on Barni, a woman in her fifties who reemerges after years in hiding to take revenge on Ardo, a gangster who rules through fear. Her violent reappearance is witnessed by a young bus conductor, who becomes obsessed with uncovering her identity. His pursuit sets the unlikely pair on a dangerous and unexpectedly intimate path.

The project is a five-country co-production led by Sébastien Onomo of France’s Special Touch Studios, with Rabbit Films in Finland, Paul Thiltges Distributions in Luxembourg, Norway’s STÆR, and Canadian production house Périphéria Productions. Location scouting in East Africa is expected to begin later this year.

Ahmed, born in Mogadishu and now based in Helsinki, says Thundering Smoke is a “much more ambitious” undertaking than his first feature. He envisions it as the second part of a trilogy exploring “the lengths people go for love,” though he stresses that the style and scope will depart from The Gravedigger’s Wife.

That 2021 debut, quietly upended expectations for a debut from the Horn of Africa. Shot in Djibouti on a modest budget, the critically acclaimed film told the story of a family racing to fund a life-saving kidney operation. It premiered in 2021 at Cannes Critics’ Week to warm reviews, with critics praising its blend of humor, tenderness, and cultural specificity. Variety’s Guy Lodge called it a “plaintively moving debut feature” that stood out for its understated grace. The film was Somalia’s first submission for the best international feature Academy Award.

From Cannes, the film travelled widely across the festival circuit. It won the Amplify Voices Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and claimed the Golden Stallion of Yennenga at FESPACO, the continent’s most prestigious film prize. It screened at the Safar Film Festival in the UK, the Oslo Films from the South Festival, and the Luxor African Film Festival, among others, bringing Somali storytelling to audiences rarely reached by films from the region.

Looking back, Ahmed admits he was surprised by its global success. “At the time, I didn’t even know if I wanted to direct,” he recalled. “I just wanted to be a screenwriter . But he said he realized that he “might never find somebody that can tell this story the way I want to tell it.”

The Gravedigger’s Wife also marked his first film shot in Africa, a revelation for a filmmaker who had until then worked in Finland. Ahmed says he fell in love with the possibilities of African cinema, its colors, its light, its landscapes, and drew inspiration from directors such as Ousmane Sembène, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, and Abderrahmane Sissako.

For Ahmed, Thundering Smoke represents both a continuation of that journey and an expansion of it. “It’s just endless possibilities,” he said. “ I really want to push the boundaries [and] see how far I can go as a filmmaker.”