Amaal Said's 2025 FVU-commissioned film Open Country features as part of Artists Film International: A Kind of Power, screening with Focal Point Gallery (Big Screen Southend) from 2 October until 20 December 2026.
A Kind of Power brings together a selection of international artists whose films renegotiate the fraught legacies of representation and respond to the conditions under which people, histories, and territories are made visible. Curated and convened by Forma, in collaboration with a network of cultural institutions, the 19th edition of Artists Film International (AFI ’26) is structured as a decentralised curatorial platform in which each partner nominates an artist from its local context.
About the work
Amaal Said's film Open Country follows a Somali mother and daughter who set out from their London home along the Old Kent Road, tracing the Pilgrims' Way into Bexley, North Kent, and beyond. The daughter plans to record an audio cassette diary for her grandmother, who is back home in Somalia and in ill health. Hoping to ease her mother’s worries and lift her spirits, she uses the journey as a way to bring joy and to help her focus on the road ahead. Inspired by a longing to connect with family abroad, the film explores the tension between being present in the here and now and yearning for another place. A number of sequences were filmed at the Red House, a National Trust property in Bexley originally built for the artist William Morris, in addition to locations in Canterbury and the Kent coast.
--
Commissioned for The Open Road by Film and Video Umbrella, Forma and Three Rivers. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
