Surrey youth work inspired the VIFF legal drama Lifeline

The Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) opened Thursday with 256 screenings at 10 venues, running until Oct. 11. Among the 162 feature films selected is Lifeline, a legal drama with strong ties to Surrey: director Ilhan Abdullahi worked there as a refugee settlement youth worker, while producer Mimi Dejene grew up in the city and still lives there.

The 77-minute film centres on the case of a basketball player who was wrongly convicted and his connection with a Somali youth worker. It will make its B.C. debut, with filmmaker Q&As on Thursday and Saturday, Oct. 8 and 10, at International Village. In English with some subtitles, Lifeline follows youth worker Ibtisam Farah, played by Muna Abdulahi, as she becomes involved in a criminal investigation and reconnects with her estranged community.

Abdullahi said the story is fictional but was inspired by cases she encountered while working as a youth worker in Surrey. Her family came to Canada as refugees in the early 1990s. She worked for several years at Pacific Community Resources Society in Surrey and collaborated with DIVERSEcity, including grassroots youth-mobilizing work with Surrey’s Somali community.

She was also writing screenplays at the time and completed an early version of Lifeline in 2014. She later developed her debut feature screenplay through the Whistler Film Festival Screenwriters Lab. Two years ago, she met Dejene at a Black Women Film & Media retreat. Dejene recalled that they got along and spoke about their dreams and projects. They decided to collaborate on the short film The Houseguest; after that went well, Abdullahi asked Dejene to join the feature, and she agreed.

Abdullahi called showing a film at VIFF a lifelong dream and said it would be amazing to screen Lifeline in Surrey one day. The 15-day shoot included nine or 10 days in Surrey, with filming at city hall, several homes and a youth centre. Abdullahi said they worked closely with James Monk at the City of Surrey and that he was fantastic.

For Dejene, producing Lifeline was a bit like being a parent: she wore many hats and filled gaps to get the film finished. The grassroots independent production involved raising funds, finding crew and even picking up food; she said she had her hands full across all departments and aspects of the project. Bringing the film to the screen feels like a dream, she said, because Vancouver and especially Surrey rarely play themselves in film or television. Setting a story in their hometown, where they grew up, felt magical.

Abdullahi’s next project is the feature Midnight Run, an international thriller about two sisters whose business bonding trip goes wrong. Dejene is in post-production on Hair No Hair, about a Black woman struggling with alopecia. As its director and writer, she hopes to expand Melse, rooted in her Ethiopian culture, into a feature film.