‘Fishing Without Nets,’ Film About Somali Pirates Told from Pirates Perspective Wins Sundance Jury Award [Video]

Jan 25, 2012

The Sundance Institute’s Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking was awarded to "Fishing Without Nets" — a story of pirates in Somalia, told from the perspective of the pirates themselves.

Director Cutter Hodierne, 25, tells the Washington Post more about his film:

Hodierne and Hibey, a Georgetown Prep graduate, traveled to Mombasa, Kenya’s second largest city, in late 2010 and early 2011 to do research and maybe make a trailer for Hodierne’s feature (they were joined along the way by co-producer Raphael Swann, another Woodlawn alum). "When we got there, we knew we wanted to make a short," Hodierne said from his home in Los Angeles. "We basically wrote it the first couple of weeks we were there and used the people we met to inspire what it was going to be about."

Although many of the cast members of "Fishing Without Nets" are people the filmmakers met on the streets of Mombasa, the lead actor, a 17-year-old ­named Abdi, was cast after a formal audition at a local nightclub. But if casting was relatively easy thanks to Mombasa’s large Somali refu­gee population, shooting was another story. With government corruption, the production’s microscopic budget and gun-permit issues that briefly landed the filmmakers in jail, Hodierne said, "putting this project together was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done."

Award recipients will be honored at the Festival’s Awards Ceremony on Saturday, January 28 at 7:00 p.m. MT and live streamed at www.sundance.org/live.