Warriors from the north

Documentary

60 min.

This documentary tells the story of a young Danish-Somalian whose friends have gone to Somalia to join the terrorist group Al-Shabab, and a father whose son has left for the same reason.

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In a marquee in Mogadishu, the newly graduated doctors are being celebrated. Dressed up relatives and friends are everywhere and up on stage the young graduates, in full gala dresses, are overlooking the crowd. Down below them, in the front row, a young man is taking pictures. He is there as a journalist, to cover the happy event. No one in the marquee knows that this young “journalist” is Abdi Rahman from Denmark. Nor that he, in just a few seconds, will blow himself up and take several young doctors with him in the blast. Warriors from the North is about young Somali-European men, who leave their comfortable everyday life in European cities to become fighters, and perhaps even suicide bombers, in Somalia? one of the most dangerous and impoverished places in the world. These young men, the majority of which are born and raised in Scandinavia, are typically recruited there and subsequently leave for Somalia, where they are trained by Al-Shabaab, an Islamic terrorist organization, to help obtain Islamic rule in Somalia. The film gets close to an otherwise impenetrable milieu, the immigrants at the bottom of the social hierarchy, where Al-Shabaab is always feared? even at a great distance.

  • Director

    Søren Steen Jespersen and Nasib Farah

  • Producer

    Helle Faber

  • Produced by

    Made in Copenhagen for DR in association with NRK

  • Original title

    Krigerne fra Nord

  • Format

    60 min.

  • Release

    2014