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Mohammed Sheikh’s Barni marks feature film debut at Red Sea festival

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Tuesday September 16, 2025

Mohammed Sheikh, founder of Aleel Films, in his studio in Minneapolis on Aug. 6. Anita Li | MPR News

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (HOL) — Somali-American filmmaker Mohammed Sheikh will premiere his first international feature, Barni, in December at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, marking a milestone for Somali representation on the global screen.
Shot in rural Djibouti with support from the Djiboutian government and the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, the 90-minute drama follows three teenagers searching for a missing girl. Sheikh said the project aims to challenge negative depictions of Somalis that often dominate mainstream media.

“If you’re watching TV and the first Somali you see is a pirate or a thief, that becomes your only image of us,” he said. “For people to understand who we are, authentic stories need to come from the community itself.”
Sheikh founded Aleel Films in 2018. He was born in a refugee camp in eastern Ethiopia and resettled in Minnesota in 2013. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali community in the United States, and his early shorts documented Somali life there. His nonfiction work also includes a high-visibility collaboration on the Twin Cities opioid crisis: “The Forgotten Ones: Unveiling the Opioid Effect,” a 2023 documentary produced with Generation Hope and featuring recovery advocate Abdirahman Warsame. In that film, Sheikh confronted cultural stigma around addiction, work that informs his current storytelling about community, dignity and empathy.
“It’s a touchy, sensitive topic… people don’t want to talk about it,” Sheikh said at the time, describing the barriers families face when discussing addiction. He added that his goal for viewers was simple: “to be sympathetic to those suffering from addiction.”

A still from Mohammed Sheikh’s first feature-length film, “Barni.” The movie is expected to have its world premiere in December at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia. Courtesy of Mohammed Sheikh

Sheikh originally planned to shoot Barni in Minnesota, but colleagues advised that Somalia’s conditions would complicate a feature-length production. He shifted to Djibouti, where authorities provided housing, meals and transportation for the cast and crew. The production brought together Somali actors from Djibouti and an international crew from Brazil, Uganda and the United States.
Transitioning from shorts to a feature required Sheikh to expand his team, hiring an editor, cinematographer, sound engineers and composer Ryan Williams, who studied Somali music to write the score. Sheikh said the collaboration underscored how film can bridge cultures.
“Strangers who had never met came together, laughed, shared food, and created something from my imagination,” he said.
Funding constraints have slowed post-production. Sheikh, who shot the film in January 2024, is still editing and has begun submitting Barni to festivals.
His recent recognition includes the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, which provides $20,000 annually for three years to early-career artists in Minnesota and New York. Jerome Foundation President Eleanor Savage said the selection panel was drawn to Sheikh’s “poetic imagery” and “clear, distinctive voice.”
Sheikh is also developing “To Be Whole Again,” a docuseries with the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches and Uniting & Mobilizing Mothers that follows Somali and East African women in treatment or recovery. A free screening is scheduled for Sept. 28 at The Parkway Theatre in Minneapolis, continuing a thread that began with The Forgotten Ones and now runs through his narrative work: centering Somali stories with empathy and craft.

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