Amaal Said's Open Country
A Somali mother and her British-born daughter walk together through the English countryside, carrying with them a distance that cannot be mapped.
Open Country (2025), by London-based Somali artist Amaal Said, is a short 13-minute film on migration and the emotional geographies that shape diasporic life. The film follows a Somali mother and a first-generation daughter, raised in England, as they set out from their home on the Old Kent Road in south London, tracing the Pilgrims’ Way through Bexley and North Kent towards Canterbury and the Kent coast, with a stop at William Morris’s Red House. During the journey, the daughter records an audio diary on a cassette intended for her grandmother in Somalia, who is severely ill.
Sparse yet poetic narration, pauses, long silences, and the act of moving together through the landscape slowly reveal an intimate and unresolved relational dynamic: while the daughter is physically beside her mother in the English countryside, her mother’s mind and heart are elsewhere, consumed by worry for her own mother back in Somalia and generally by a constant longing for her homecountry. This tension between wanting closeness and recognising an inherited hierarchy of care forms the emotional heart of the film. The daughter actively tries to bridge the emotional distance through the shared act of walking, as an attempt to pull her mother back into the immediate present and anchor her mother’s attention on “the road ahead” and their life in England.
Out of respect for the mother’s deep connection to the grandmother she has never met, but also in part out of jealousy and the refusal to be left out of that connection and the family’s legacy, the daughter records the audio cassette diary as a letter for her grandmother and a sort of shy reproach. While she wants to participate in her mother’s relationship with the part of the family still in Somalia, she also recounts, with some regret, that this is the first time they have ever taken a “purposeless walk” together. For the mother, the new country—where, from the daughter’s age, we might assume she has been living for twenty years or more—has so far always been viewed through the lens of routines and practicalities. It is a place defined by the labour of survival, rather than a site for exploration or understanding.
By embarking on this journey, the daughter seeks to disrupt that cycle of utility.
The path she takes deliberately follows the Pilgrims’ Way, historically linked to spiritual quests, storytelling, and community movement. She begins the walk with the hope of uplifting her mother’s spirits, easing her anxiety, and gently drawing her attention back to the landscape. Movement becomes a way of staying, rather than leaving. The daughter’s journey is an attempt not to resolve this condition, but to navigate it, to find a way of being with her mother without competing with the grandmother’s illness or the gravity of elsewhere.
Said’s background as a poet and photographer is deeply felt in the film’s form. Open Country prioritises atmosphere and texture over linear storytelling. The pacing of the walk establishes a visual rhythm akin to poetic meter, where repetition, drift, and pause carry as much meaning as dialogue. The camera lingers on small gestures, quiet exchanges, the texture of the ground beneath their feet. There is no attempt to dramatise suffering or resolve emotional tension. Instead, Open Country holds space for uncertainty, recognising that some forms of longing cannot be cured, but only accompanied. Sound plays a crucial role too. The audio cassette diary functions as an “audio bridge”, connecting the English countryside to Somalia through voice. The act of recording foregrounds oral tradition, intimacy, and the power of women’s speech.
Lastly, a further layer of meaning lies in the fact that the film is anchored in the literary bedrock of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. By tracing the ancient route from the Old Kent Road (the historic site of the Tabard Inn) toward Canterbury, Said reimagines the classic pilgrimage as a decolonial act of reclamation. By tracing these ancient steps with Somali-British bodies, Said claims a space within the national mythos. The film asserts that the English landscape is not a static museum of heritage, but a living, breathing terrain continuously reshaped by the footsteps of those who have arrived from elsewhere.
The reading of walking as a way to stay rather than leave is really striking. What got me is the idea that for the mother, England has always been viewed through utility and labor, not exploration. Reminds me of talking with my own immigrant relatives who dunno the tourist spots everyone else visits because theyve only known the commute-work-home loop. The Chaucer connection at the end ties it togeter beautifully.