I Would Totally Be a Somali Pirate

After watching the fictional short Fishing Without Nets, I could totally imagine myself as a Somali pirate, which is pretty ridiculous considering my status as VICE desk jockey. This illusion-conjuring quality of this film probably has something to do with its insular perspective, which tells the story strictly from the point of view of a poor young Somali fisherman, struggling to care for his sick daughter. As you witness his pirate progression, the short takes you beyond the Robin Hood versus villainous thief archetypes that were perpetuated in the media when the epidemic of Somali pirating first made headlines. Instead, it reaches a more realistic, morally ambiguous place. And unlike a lot of movies about Africa or Africans, there are no white characters thrown in by co-writer and director Cutter Hodierne to serve as a familiar entry point for Westerners. There’s no English dialogue, either. Instead, you’re immersed like a first person shooter game in a vivid and squalid world where every choice boils down to survival and economics for 17 minutes straight.

At the beginning of the short, the handsome fisherman named Abdi can no longer catch fish in the Indian Ocean, which I assume is a result of the very real dumping of toxic waste in the water by European superpowers. And as an inhabitant in one of the poorest countries in the world, where people have basically lived in a state of nature since the central government collapsed in 1991, he certainly can’t hold his breath for any kind of institutional assistance. Instead, he has to take matters into his own hands and make a choice—become a pirate or keep living his shitty broke ass life in which he can’t even care for his daughter. To me, that’s no a brainer. I’d be hitting the high seas jacking every corporate cargo ship in sight.

I gave director Cutter Hodierne a phone call late last week to talk about Fishing Without Nets, which just nabbed the jury prize for short filmmaking at this year's Sundance Film Festival and will be expanded into a feature length soon. That’s a big deal for a guy that is only 25 years old and a project that was started on a shoestring budget with couple of friends, John Hibey [producer and co-writer] and Raphael Swann [producer].

But it makes sense that someone like Cutter would be seeing this kind of sucess, even at such a young age.He is the kind of all-around badass that could foolishly inspire you to quit your desk job and move to Mombasa after hearing one of his wild stories. His name is Cutter for chrissakes, which makes him sound like an 80s stunt man with a butt-chin. And before filming Fishing seemingly on a whim in Kenya, he was following around and filming ball-hugging Bono and the rest of U2 on that tour where they made a buttzillion dollars and played on a stage that looks like the giant squid at the end of the Watchmen comic book.

We were supposed to talk about how great his short is, but we ended up getting sidetracked by his stories about Kenyan hookers, getting robbed, and hating white people. Here is what Cutter Hodierne had to say about Fishing Without Nets:

VICE: So, where are the all white people in Fishing Without Nets? Not many people are brave or smart enough to put African actors in the leading roles of films about Africa. I can't help but think back to flicks like Blood Diamond. Shit, even Tarzan—there should have been more brothers in that.
Cutter Hodierne: Well, I just hate white people; I can’t stand them at all. [laughs] Just kidding. I love white people! I was just really intrigued by these Somali pirates.

Were there white characters in earlier incarnations of the script who were ultimately cut out?
Well, not quite. At first, the concept was to make a story about a Somali-American who’s going back to Somalia to become a pirate. But after actually getting into Africa, that concept was cut because it was just as interesting to feature a guy from Somalia.

You guys shot it in Kenya, not actually in Somalia for obvious reasons. How many times did you go there before filming to get a lay of the land?
None. I’d never been.

You decided to film a movie in a country you’d never been before?
Yeah, I’d never been to Africa in general, actually.

Then how’d this whole thing come together?
I convinced this producing partner of mine, John Hibey, to join me for what was supposed to be a five-week trip, and it turned into three and a half months after everything we tried to do went horribly wrong. It just became this huge mess. We were in way over our heads.

How so?
Just by starting this project and not being the type to quit something once we’d already started it. We were trapped. The first couple months were just a complete culture shock. Everything we tried to do was met with opposition.

It must have not been all bad. Did you find time to let your hair down? What’s the scene like in Kenya? 
It’s the sex-trade capital of Africa.

No shit?
Yeah, we didn’t know that either. We showed up and it was just blatantly clear, immediately. Like, “Oh my God, this is the place where both men and women go to, like, get it on.” One really crazy thing, it was like day one when we were there, we discovered what was even bigger and more popular was German women coming to Mombasa to sleep with much younger local dudes.

Wow. That sounds like a VICE documentary: Mandingo Part Deux - The Dark Wieners of Africa.
There’s definitely a VICE story there. There are tons of Stellas there trying to get their groove back.

Was it out in the open?
It was blatant. Women would just walk down the beach up to some jacked 19-year-old dude, and then walk off with them. But even crazier for us was that any bar we'd go to, we'd be absurdly popular. We’d just be like, “All right, something is wrong here. We are not this cool?” Literally every woman in the place would come up to us and grab us.

Those hookers are really on top of things?
They’re forcibly aggressive. Sometimes so aggressive we thought we were being robbed. So, needless to say, during downtime, we definitely had some crazy nights in Mombasa.

What was the wildest thing a woman did while you guys were kicking it?
I like the VICE questions on interviews, they're always more interesting… The best example was this one night, we had this place that was appropriately called “Club Florida,” which we always thought was hilarious.

Was this place known for having working girls?
Yes, but we didn’t know. Later we found out the guy who took us there was just fucking with us.

Sure.
While we were partying, I looked over at John Hibey [producer]and he was really trying to shake off this girl. Saying, “Hey, sorry, no thanks…” Then another girl started pulling him, and they’re both pulling him in different directions by his arms. He started getting really nervous and screaming for help, like “Bartender! Someone help me, help me!” And I’m just sitting there laughing because both girls get him on the opposite sides of a pillar, basically pulling him apart.

Cutter at the Washington, DC premiere of Fishing Without Nets. Photo by Duy Tran Photography

You guys got robbed too, right?
Yeah, we got robbed a bunch of times. The one time that was really serious was the first night that another one of my producers, Raphael Swann, came out there.

What happened? 
We’re out on the beach at this like, German tourist resort, and there were like cover bands playing. So we were walking along the beach and there was sort of this loud music in the distance—it was an Australian band playing U2 songs…

Just like home.
Yeah. So, these guys come out of nowhere in these military uniforms with guns telling us we’re trespassing and we’re being taken to jail. They handcuff us to each other and start walking us out to the water. And they’re fighting amongst each other and we’re freaking out, thinking, “Oh my god, this is it. We’re about to get killed. Holy shit.” And meanwhile, off in the distance, there’s all this music so we can’t yell or get help and they’re walking us farther away from all the people. All we can hear is “It’s a beautiful dayyy!” blasting behind us.

How ironic. Having worked for U2, that song probably meant something totally differnt to you before coming to Kenya.
Yeah, at the time, I thought it was going to be the soundtrack to my death. It certainly wasn’t a beautiful day.

So how'd you make it out alive?
We realized these guys were not actual cops and we could pay a fine. Then they let us go. But in doing that we realized, “Oh my God, we were just captured by Somali pirates! We have some good material!”

Were these guys pretty serious characters or were they like the pirates in the film—a little goofy in carrying out crimes.
Yeah, it's chaotic to be around these guys with guns who don’t even know who’s in charge. And it’s almost scarier when you’re like, “OK, this guy isn’t going to intentionally kill me, but I really don’t trust his ability to keep his finger off the trigger and not accidently kill me.” That’s what it felt like, so in the feature version of this movie, there will be more of that.

Tell me about the feature version. How are you guys planning to do it?
I think the plan is basically to go back and make a feature film much in the same way we did this one. We would cast non-actors, all locals, Somali refugees, shoot it in the same area and just expand on the story. Primarily it'll be about this kid who, even though he doesn’t speak much English, becomes the pirates’ negotiator and quickly realizes that he’s not qualified for the job at all. So it’s that same “guy-who-wouldn’t-normally-get-into-it-gets-into-it” story that the short tells, but this will go deeper. You'll get to see the capture of the ship and all kinds of chaos and stuff.

Are the same protagonists going to be in the new film?
I hope so. I would ideally cast the main kid, Abdi, and then definitely some of the supporting pirates.

I know the cast was entirely Somali refugees, but were any of them ex-pirates? 
A few of the pirates who are featured primarily were militia fighters in Somalia, they have some nasty wounds and have been involved in the fighting. A couple of them said things like “My cousin’s a pirate" and "I was about to be a pirate,” but fact-checking those guys is really hard. I do think that a bunch of those guys are the kinds of men who, had they still been living in Somalia and had the opportunity, would totally have done it. But none of them, as far as I know, were ever out there capturing boats.

You’ve talked about your initial "Robin Hood" perception of these pirates. Why do you think it’s easy to see these guys as archetypes, instead of people with a multitude of conflicting motivations?
I think there was a portrayal in the media for a while that was like, “Hey these guys aren’t all bad.” And I think it was a little too simple—like this radicals at odds with the status quo dichotomy. The truth is, it’s not that they’re all evil and it’s not they’re all Robin Hoods doing this to save their clan from illegal fishing—it’s just a big gray area that totally comes from the idea that when you don’t have shit, you go out and steal.

Yeah, I totally feel that. Thanks Cutter.

@WilbertLCooper