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Drama Mohamed Echkouna

Trail of Hope

On the deserted highway from Nouakchott-to-Nouadhibou, a young self-centered taxi driver meets a woman whose story changes the way he thinks about women’s rights.

Play
Drama Mohamed Echkouna

Trail of Hope

On the deserted highway from Nouakchott-to-Nouadhibou, a young self-centered taxi driver meets a woman whose story changes the way he thinks about women’s rights.
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Trail of Hope

Drama about Abuse in Live-Action
Directed By Mohamed Echkouna
Produced By Umsizi Fund & Savannah College of Art and Design
Made In Mauritania

A short film aiming to shed some light on the physical and emotional abuse woman around the world are made to endure, Mohamed Echkouna’s Trail of Hope is a powerful and thought-provoking 15-minute short set in Mauritania, Africa. Centred around a taxi driver and his unusual encounter with a young woman in the middle of nowhere, Echkouna describes himself as ‘part of a new generation of young African filmmakers who are determined to bring stories from the continent to the world’.

“I could see every detail. The colors of their clothes, and the vastness of the landscape”

Created as his final project at Savannah College of Art and Design, Echkouna was inspired to write the story for Trail of Hope after being struck by a vision of a scene during class. “In the middle of a History of Film lecture, I suddenly started thinking about an image that couldn’t leave my thoughts for the next two years”, the director reveals. “An image of multiple Mauritanian women walking towards a road in the middle of a desert. I could see every detail. The colors of their clothes, and the vastness of the landscape. A few weeks later, I started constructing a story around the image”.

Though set in Mauritania and focused on the many young girls in the country who find themselves pressured into marriage at an early age, Echkouna is keen to point out the message of his film shouldn’t be restricted by the location of his narrative. “It is the story of many women around the world who are subjected to physical and emotional abuse within their surroundings”, he says. “I wanted the film to lean more towards metaphoric and psychological experiences instead of telling a straightforward story, thus guiding the audience’s emotions, empowering their own thoughts to make the conclusions and interpret Mariam and Abdallahi’s story in multiple ways that resonate them”.

Shortlisted for a BAFTA Student Award, Trail of Hope was shot on a Canon 5D Mark III, edited in Final Cut and graded in BlackMagic’s Davinci. Now working on pre-production for a visual documentary that “chronicles a spiritual and sensory journey through the streets and underbelly of New York City”, you can follow Mohammed’s work through his Vimeo page below.

Filmmaker's Vimeo