Desert Flower

Desert Flower (2009) is a biographical drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Sherry Hormann. At thirteen, Waris walked out of a Somali nomadic settlement — alone, on foot, with nothing. A few years later she was scrubbing floors at the Somali embassy in London.

What followed reads like something no one would have invented. Liya Kebede plays Waris Dirie — the woman who went from that cleaning job to the covers of Vogue, then to a UN podium where she spoke publicly about what was done to her as a child. Sally Hawkins plays the friend who takes her in; Anthony Mackie, Juliet Stevenson, and Timothy Spall round out the cast. Waris's autobiography — written with Cathleen Miller — became the source for the film.

This is not a story about modeling. It's about the cost of saying something out loud that the world would rather not hear. Stream Desert Flower (2009) online on iFILM.