Hiiraan Online

Today from Hiiraan Online:

Somali Music

Google Plus

advertisements

Somali-Canadian filmmaker Ilhan Abdullahi debuts Lifeline with rapper Sharma Boy on soundtrack

FacebookFacebook messengerTwitterWhatsAppLinkedInTelegramEmail

Friday September 12, 2025

“TORONTO, Canada (HOL) — Somali-Canadian filmmaker Ilhan Abdullahi will make her feature debut with Lifeline, a Vancouver-set drama led by a predominantly Somali cast and featuring original music by Somali rapper Sharma Boy, whose global following has made him a cultural icon of the Somali diaspora.
The film, set to begin production later this year, is produced by actor-director Agam Darshi (Donkeyhead) and *Mimi Dejene. The cast includes Hanad Abdi (Little America), Elmi Rashid Elmi (The Swimmers), Saman Hasan (Ramadan America), and Muna Abdulahi (The Mole).
Lifeline tells the story of a high school basketball star wrongfully convicted in suburban Vancouver. His case draws in Ibtisam Farah, a Somali youth worker estranged from her community, who becomes an unlikely advocate as she confronts the justice system and her own disconnection.

Abdullahi, whose parents migrated from Somalia, has built a career at the intersection of public health, community organizing, and filmmaking. A PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University, she researches Black refugees and health equity, while her shorts — Dreamers (2021), Not For Us? (2023), Unqualified (2024) — explore Somali life with humour, empathy, and political urgency.
She is an alumna of the Whistler Film Festival Screenwriters Lab and was recognized as a Noteworthy Black Figure of Canada for her community contributions. Abdullahi has described Lifeline as a project shaped by “collaboration, trust, and lived experience,” aimed at amplifying Somali and refugee voices.
Joining the film is Sharma Boy, born Sharmarke Abdinasir Mohamed in Puntland in 1998. Raised in Mogadishu, he began posting songs to YouTube in 2019 and has since become one of Somalia’s most recognized artists, with 2.38 million subscribers and hits such as “Caga Dhigo” (34 million views). His music, a fusion of Somali melodies and hip hop rhythms, often addresses unemployment, extremism, and clan tensions.
Now based in Minneapolis, Sharma Boy has collaborated with Somali-Canadian rapper K’Naan and mentors Somali-American youth through songwriting workshops. His work is credited with connecting diaspora youth to Somali language and identity while giving global audiences an unvarnished portrait of Somali urban life.
With its community-driven ethos, cultural specificity, and artistic ambition, Lifeline is expected to draw attention on the festival circuit, continuing a wave of African diaspora cinema gaining visibility in North America and beyond.
Recent Somali and Somali-diaspora projects have sharpened this momentum, signalling a cinema that is at once local in texture and international in reach. At Cannes in 2024, Mo Harawe’s The Village Next to Paradise screened in Un Certain Regard, a quietly devastating portrait of a rural Somali family negotiating the banalities of survival amid conflict and climate crisis. Later that year, Mother Mother, the feature directorial debut of Somali-Canadian musician K’naan Warsame, arrived at the Toronto International Film Festival, threading questions of identity and belonging through the intimate lens of a mother-son bond. Even in short form, Somali filmmakers are pushing into global conversations: Warda Mohamed’s Muna has travelled across international platforms with its delicate exploration of grief, dislocation, and the fragile kinships formed in diaspora.

Somali rapper Sharma Boy, whose socially charged lyrics and millions of YouTube views have made him a leading cultural voice of his generation, photographed in Minneapolis in 2022. Credit: Ibrahim Hirsi/ Sahan Journal

Opinion| Privacy Policy|Sports|Somali Music|Somali Map

All Rights Reserved Copyright. © 1999-2025, www.hiiraan.com