“Woman Land,” a 10-minute film made in Minneapolis by an entirely Minnesota cast and crew, is making its local and international debuts this spring.
The film was selected for the 2026 Tampere Film Festival International Competition in March, one of the world’s premiere short film festivals, held annually in Finland. Winning films at the Tampere festival qualify for the Oscars and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts festival. “Woman Land” is the only production entirely made in the United States featured in this year’s international competition.
“Woman Land” will have its local debut at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival, which takes place April 8-19 this year.
The film’s director and writer, Yasmin Yassin, worked on it for two years after the production of her photography and film project “Dhaanto,” a 2023 project that followed a Minneapolis-based East African dance troupe and its coach.
“Woman Land” is an intergenerational coming-of-age short film about sisters Hafsa and Sumaya, who create an online matchmaking service. The film had a modest budget and a small cast made up of women from the local community.
Yasmin said she was moved to make the film to bring to the big screen things she wasn’t seeing in cinema.
“I really wanted to make something for the women in my community,” she said. “I didn’t see us represented yet in ways that showed us doing our everyday lives in an interesting way, that didn’t show us suffering. The girls are teenagers and young adults, so in their minds they’re probably always suffering. But I really wanted to add to the coming-of-age genre characters that felt relatable and interesting, and just leave it at that.”
“As a Somali filmmaker, I hope my films add to the body of work of other Somali films and other East African and pan-African films,” Yasmin said.
“Woman Land” is set in south Minneapolis, and features cultural landmarks on Lake Street and other sites in Minnesota’s Somali diaspora.
Nadia Sharaawi, assistant director of “Woman Land,” said the mobile gyro truck shown in the beginning of the film is connected to her family in the Twin Cities. Sharaawi, who is Egyptian, said she felt inspired to be part of the film after reading the script.
“[The film shows] cultural nuances that aren’t typically shown in narratives, let alone mainstream,” Sharaawi said. “There are a lot of films speaking to, what does it mean to be second-generation, living in the U.S. as Somali, as Muslim, as diaspora, as of a different ethnicity — oftentimes it feels very centered on struggle, or there is a source of conflict and feeling a responsibility and an obligation to show the heavy.”
The film’s leads are Hodan Hassan, who plays the younger, curious sister, Hafsa, and Nadira Hussein, who plays the extroverted, encouraging older sister, Sumaya. The two were colleagues at the Somali Museum of Minnesota and reunited for the film. Hodan and Nadira, both of whom are 24, appreciate what the film symbolizes.
“It’s a different kind of representation,” Hodan said.
Nadira, a graduate student in heritage studies and public history at the University of Minnesota, said being part of the film was deeply meaningful.
“The film is important to a lot of people, but while I was filming, it felt very important to me,” she said. “I really enjoy the experience of being surrounded by so many women. I didn’t recognize how appreciative I’d be of the environment created on set. Every person that I’ve worked with was so authentically Somali woman. I felt the space accurately reflected that.”
Most in the “Woman Land” cast and crew are women.
“I grew up in a very woman-sole household,” said Yasmin, who said she feels close to the character Hafa. “I only have sisters. I grew up in a very matriarchal household — my mom, my grandmother and my aunts.”
“I wanted to have people on the team that could really resonate with the characters, which is why we had so many women on the team involved, both behind and in front of the camera,” she said.
Filsan Said, producer of “Woman Land,” said the scheme of main characters is resonant of traditional practices in a present-day context — for instance gathering information online to gauge whether two people would be a good match. “The matchmaking business these girls are engaging in connects to back-in-the-day matchmaking,” Filsan said.
The film’s style is informed by the fable format, often seen in traditional African storytelling. It also features the use of certain coloring like pinks, blues and greens, a pattern seen in previous works by Yasmin- a commitment to uniformity throughout her projects.
“We wanted the film to feel very warm, like a fairy folktale,” Yasmin said. “I also wanted to juxtapose the idea of winter here, because we filmed in winter. It was really, really cold. You’ll see there’s always a contrast. There’s a duality in the film between the interior of the house, which is so warm — a lot of our traditional households are very warm, the colors of spices and the colors of gold — and then there’s Minneapolis in the winter, which is very cold and dry.”
In a landscape of dwindling resources and funding for filmmakers, resource sharing and collaborations helped make the film possible, Yasmin said.
Minneapolis DJ Yasmeenah Sideak-Jama was the film’s music supervisor. The film features music from Somali artists Bebeluna, from London, and Hanad Bandz, from Toronto. Like Minneapolis, London and Toronto also have large Somali diaspora populations.
“You don’t really hear Somali music in film,” Yasmeenah said.
“Somalinimo, meaning you show up for your people and you’re hospitable — when I reached out to both Hanad and Bebeluna for music for this film, they immediately said yes and wanted to support independent Somali filmmaking. They were delighted. That to me is Somalinimo at its finest,” she said.
