Monday April 7, 2025
Mogadishu (HOL) — The film opens with a man standing at a door, pleading for a life not yet lost.
Behind that door is another man, hiding from a group of armed men who have come to kill him. Outside, a woman screams for blood. The man at the door, Guudey Mohamed Geeddi, begs them to stop.
“He just works at a restaurant,” he says. “What has he done to you?”
No one listens.
That was fiction. The scene was written, staged and shot for a short Somali film called Aano Qabiil, or Clan Revenge. It was meant to warn people—Somalis, young and old—about the futility of killing in the name of blood.
But three months later, Guudey was dead. Shot outside his home by men with guns and old grievances. No cameras, no second takes, no one to plead his case.
In a country where history bleeds into every dust road and silence, Aano Qabiil tried to hold a mirror to the deadliest ritual in Somali life: the killing of one man to avenge the death of another.
The title came from a proverb that lands like a curse: “No one has ever risen from the grave in vengeance.”
Abdisiyaad Abdullahi Mohamed, a 27-year-old filmmaker with Astaan TV, wrote the film after growing up on stories of men who died because they were born into the wrong lineage.
“I wanted people to feel the weight,” Abdisiyaad told the BBC Somali Service. “To know that every man killed leaves behind a wife, a child, a family that collapses.”
In the film, a man named Cali is killed in a clan reprisal. His friend Saalax hides, grieves, and dreams of escape. In a devastating moment, Saalax’s life is spared—only because someone speaks up for him. That someone was played by Guudey.
The scene made people weep. Guudey’s voice, trembling but firm, cut through the chaos. He was the man trying to hold the madness at bay.
Guudey had travelled to a small village near Warsheikh to visit his family. He never came back.
“He died the way we filmed it,” said Cadaawe, a colleague and close friend. “Only this time, no one tried to stop it.”
The irony was unbearable. Guudey wasn’t just an actor; he had believed in the message. He had lent his voice—his very body—to a warning.
“We worked together every day,” Abdisiyaad said. “Guudey wasn’t reading lines. He was the story.”
Clan revenge is a poison that seeps into everything in Somalia: politics, business, love, and death. It has survived generations, shaping war and peace, forgiveness and violence.
A 2023 report by PeaceRep, a UK-based think tank, documented a surge in revenge killings in Somalia’s central regions. Over 160 such killings in a single year—most with no investigation, no justice. In some areas, nearly 80 percent go unresolved.
Each killing sparks another. Each family waits its turn. And somewhere, always, another boy grows into a man, holding onto his father’s ghosts.
Since Guudey’s death, the film has found a second life on Somali social media. On TikTok and Facebook, his final scene is posted over and over. His voice, trembling, still trying to stop a killing that already happened.
The line that opened the film—“No one has ever risen from the grave in vengeance”—now sounds like a eulogy-not just for Guudey, but for all the others.
Asked what he wants people to take from the film now, Abdisiyaad paused.
“I want them to understand that revenge doesn’t end pain,” he said. “It only creates more graves. Guudey gave his life to tell people that. I just hope someone heard him.”
- With files from the BBC Somali Service
