Document Women Premieres Short Film at Sokoto Book and Arts Festival
Document Women's latest short film titled Kallabi tsakanin Rawunna (Headscarves amongst turbans) has premiered at the Sokoto Book and Arts Festival (SobaFest) 2022, happening on the 4th-6th of November.
This series follows the lives of four women in Nigeria’s northern “Arewa” community who excel in the non-traditional male-dominated sports industry. Check out the trailer here.
The documentary features polo players, Hadiza Shehu and Aishat, Hanan Isah, a drifter and Aisha Shuaibu who is the president of SWASports, a sports promotion company.
This documentary is created by Document Women, an award-winning media platform combating erasure by documenting women’s historical and present contributions to society.
Aisha Kabiru Mohammed, the debuting director, said she tried to disrupt stereotypes about northern Nigerian women.
"I got tired of hearing that we were one thing, and so I set out to tell the stories of Arewa Women who are challenging the narrative of timid, uneducated, and quiet women. I wanted to show how complex and different we are and celebrate that. I think I've achieved this so far," She said. " I learnt a lot from it. It was the first time I directed anything, so I was learning a lot about video content while we were filming. I think the most challenging thing was scheduling shoots. We were working with women who had busy schedules, so we had to weave around them. I'm grateful to Kiki for giving me this opportunity and for Maryam and Victor who put up with a lot of hiccups during production."
Document Women CEO and co-producer Kiki Mordi shared her excitement over the directorial debut from the Document Women writer.
"We’ve continued to show that women are storytellers and I’m honored that we have become a medium for more women storytellers to discover themselves," Kiki Mordi said. "This is an important story that was told about women from the Arewa community by Aisha, a woman from the Arewa community - that to me is very important."