Somali Film 'Accept My Plea for Burial' Wins Top Grant at Locarno's Open Doors 2026
A Somali social drama about two boys, a fatal fall, and a mother who refuses to bury her son without justice has won one of the top prizes at the 2026 Locarno Film Festival's Open Doors co-production platform.
Mohammed Sheikh's Accept My Plea for Burial — also known by its Somali title Baryo Aas Iga Gudoon — was named one of two main winners of the Open Door Grant, carrying a CHF 20,000 award (roughly $24,000) to help move the project toward completion (The Hollywood Reporter; Locarno Open Doors, Instagram).
Open Doors is Locarno's development and co-production lab, focused on filmmakers from regions underrepresented on the global festival circuit. A win there puts a project in front of sales agents, producers, and festival programmers who decide what reaches screens in the coming years.
The film is set in a remote Somali pastoral village. Two 12-year-old boys, Waasuge and Warmooge, are herding goats when their playful rivalry turns tragic: Warmooge falls into a steep dry riverbed and dies. His mother, Saluugla, refuses to bury him until she has justice. The village elder, Alamagan, tries to mediate through customary law and religious counsel, probing the tensions between tradition and justice in a tight rural community (The Hollywood Reporter; The Hollywood Reporter).
Sheikh told The Hollywood Reporter the story is drawn from life. He experienced a similar incident growing up in a community like the one in the film, and survived it. He described the project as exploring loss, grief, love, family, and justice, and cited Yi Yi, 12 Angry Men, and A Separation as films that inspired his approach — placing ordinary people inside moral conflicts (The Hollywood Reporter).
The project is produced by Kadir Harbi Hassan of Somalia's Aleel Films and is a co-production between Djibouti, Somalia, and Qatar. Sheikh's previous film, Barni, was released in 2025 (The Hollywood Reporter; Locarno Film Festival).
What makes the win resonate is the route from personal memory to an international platform. A story rooted in one Somali village, told in co-production across three countries, now carries the backing of one of Europe's oldest festivals and the grant money that can push it from work-in-progress to a finished film.
