Private Project

HURRIYAH

Northern Nigeria. Dawn. Eight-year old Zainab watches a leaf float downriver, a black stone in her hand. "Where does it go?" she asks. She sees maps everywhere. With charred sticks, she draws her village, including the path north into hills she's never seen.

Her father sees danger. When Zainab is twelve, he finds her map and in its details, escape routes. He betroths her immediately. She runs. She is caught. She marries.

The years that follow are a cage measured in steps: to the well, to the fire. She stops drawing on paper but maps everything in her mind.

At seventeen, pregnant with her second child, something shifts. Her son brings her a white stone. That night, on a flour sack with charcoal, she draws her map again including the northern path.

She takes her son to the river. Then, impulsively, they climb toward the hill. A contraction stops her. Her water breaks. She sends her son for help and lies alone on the hillside as the sun sets, finally seeing the view she mapped but never explored.

She dies in childbirth. Her daughter lives. The girl is named HURRIYAH (Freedom).

In the film's final moments, Rakiya who once urged the marriage unrolls the flour-sack map. Haruna places stones on it: black at the river, green at the tree. The white stone goes into baby Hurriyah's hand.

"This is for all the places you'll go," Rakiya whispers. A bird flies past the window. Free.

  • Twamsan Danaan
    Director
  • Twamsan Danaan
    Writer
  • Mariam Kwairanga
    Writer
  • Hirse Peace Dalaham
    Producer
  • Dorothy Beninga
    Key Cast
  • Mohammed Shehu Suliaman
    Key Cast
  • Musa Muhammad Abdullahi
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    25 minutes 48 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    February 25, 2026
  • Production Budget:
    15,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Nigeria
  • Country of Filming:
    Nigeria
  • Shooting Format:
    digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Twamsan Danaan

Twamsan Danaan is a graduate of film production from the National Film Institute, Jos where he mastered in Cinematography and Directing. He started working in the film industry since his schooling days, working on student short films, documentaries, Television series and feature films developing himself as a skilled camera man and film director. After graduation, he worked as a camera operator on films like If I am President which was released in 2018, and as a camera assistant on Kar Ki Manta Da ni_2019. He has worked on numerous films and documentaries like the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) documentary film titled, Plateau on the move which was released in 2017. In 2019 on a feature film titled Rukayya which won the Best Indigenous film at the 2019 Zuma International Film festival. In 2021, he was 2nd Unit Director of Photography on Detour. He is an alumnus of the 2020 One World Media program dedicated to Journalism and documentary film making. His debut short documentary film Big Dreams: A tale of resilience_2022 won the award for best documentary film at the 2022 Kano Indigenous Language of Africa film market and Festival and has screened at the Silicon Valley African film festival and Vancouver black independent film festival in 2022. In February 2025 his feature film directorial debut was part of the selected project for the yennenga post production at FESPACO. His recent works include the short film "Evil Spirit, Get Out!" by Theo-Ziny Joel which won the Best Short Film (Jury Choice) award at the Lagos Fringe Festival 2024. It was also nominated for Best Experimental Film at the Abuja Film Festival and a feature length documentary film titled Dan Bature Kudawa (The Englishman of House Kudu) 2025 directed by Charles Francis Solomon. He concluded filming the debut feature film title A burial for Kulu Yandaki for director Theo-Ziny Joel in May. He is correctly in development for his second feature film.

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Director Statement

We are living through a global crisis of girls' education and autonomy. In Nigeria, millions of girls are still married before eighteen. But this film is not a polemic. It is not an exposé. It is a poem.

I am not interested in making villains of Zainab's father or husband. They are not monsters. They are products of a system that fears what it cannot control and what it cannot control is a woman's mind. Mallam Sani loves his daughter. Muhammad is not cruel. But love, in a cage, becomes another kind of lock.

Rakiya is the film's most complex figure. She loves Zainab but betrays her, not out of malice, but out of fear. She has survived by not asking questions. She cannot imagine another way. Her arc, across the film, is one of recognition: she sees, too late, what her silence cost. And in the final moments, she tries to break the cycle. She places the white stone in Hurriyah's hand. She speaks Zainab's name aloud. She becomes, at last, her daughter's witness.

This is the cycle I want to interrupt: the passing down of silence from mother to daughter. The only way to break it is to start speaking. To start mapping. To start asking where the river goes.