Desert Flower

A film adapted from a real life. Waris grows up in a nomadic family in the Somali desert. She undergoes a cutting as a small child and the effects stay with her for life. At thirteen she is to be married. The man is much older and camels are given in exchange. She runs. She crosses the desert on foot, finds relatives, and is sent to London to work as a servant at the Somali embassy. When the government changes the embassy closes. Waris is left on the street; she has no English, no papers, and finds cleaning work at a shop. A woman named Marilyn takes her in. From there the film is a rise. A photographer notices her, an agency, a first shoot, campaigns, and a worldwide career. At the same time there is a medical problem. She has to see a doctor, and there she tells someone what happened to her for the first time. What the narrative is interested in is not modelling but speaking: the film is really about a woman going to a magazine and describing what was done to her, and that decision changes her life. Waris Dirie later worked for the United Nations on female genital cutting and wrote her memoir; the film rests on that book. Liya Kebede plays Waris; she is an Ethiopian model who moved into acting for the part. Liya Kebede, Sally Hawkins, Timothy Spall and Juliet Stevenson are in the cast. Sherry Hormann directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes real-life adaptations and films with a heavy subject told conventionally. Who it is not for: anyone unprepared for the medical detail; the film states it directly in one scene.