Scythia Films, the production banner behind The Apprentice, which premiered in competition in Cannes, announced its next feature NUUR,

from director Lula Ali Ismaïl (Dhalinyaro) with Omar Abdi (The Gravedigger’s Wife) and Hamza Fouad (“Riverdale”, “Arrow”) attached to star. Adapted from the novel The Youth of God by Hassan Ghedi Santur, who also wrote the script, the film will be produced by Daniel Bekerman (The Apprentice, The Witch), Chris Yurkovich (Slash/Back) and Lara Saliba under the Good Question Media banner in association with Scythia Films. Jordan Hart (I, Object), Michael Bronner (The Mauritanian, Captain Phillips) and Bhakti Shringarpure of Smashing Dandelions will be executive producing. Telefilm Canada is funding the production. Casting is currently underway.

Set in Dixon, the Somali community in Toronto, NUUR explores themes of migration, assimilation, longing for the home country, intergenerational trauma and the struggle for identity. The film centers on Nuur, a sensitive and academically gifted 17-year-old boy growing up in Dixon, as he negotiates perilously between the calling of his faith, his intellectual ambitions and troubled family life.

In the tradition of evocative films about migration like Lulu Wang’s Farewell, Mira Nair’s The Namesake and Andrew Dosunmu’s Mother of George, NUUR lays bare the harsh realities of being Black, migrant and Muslim in one of North America’s most multicultural and ostensibly tolerant cities: Toronto.

Lula Ali Ismaïl is a Canadian-Djiboutian director, producer, screenwriter and actress whose first feature film, Dhalinyaro (Youth) is a coming-of-age story of three young women navigating love, friendship and uncertain futures. It was the first film to come out of Djibouti and earned her the nickname of “the first lady of Djiboutian cinema”.

Ismaïl says that NUUR “is close to my heart because it will allow me to show the specific and the universal experience of Somali migration from within, having been part of it myself, and to authentically document the experiences of those who struggle to feel good in a new place”.

Abdi is represented by Alta Global Media. Fouad is represented by Lucas Talent and Venture Entertainment Partners.