Desert Flower

Wallis (Liya Kebede) was born in the desert of Somalia and lived a nomadic life with her mother. At the age of three, Waris was female circumcised in accordance with Somali custom. When she was twelve years old, her father wanted to marry Wallis to a sixty-year-old man in order to get five camels. On the eve of her wedding, with her mother's acquiescence, Wallis walked for a long time in the desert to join her grandmother in Mogadishu. She also got the opportunity from her grandmother to work as a maid for the aunt of the then wife of the Somali Ambassador to the UK. Shortly after arriving in the UK, war broke out in Somalia and the old government was overthrown. Wallis took advantage of the chaos and fled the embassy again and ended up living on the streets of Britain. Wallis met Marilyn (played by Sally Hawkins) who took her in on the street, and then met Bole in the restaurant where she worked. She was eventually discovered to become a world-famous model and devoted herself to the cause of women's liberation. The movie "Desert Flower" is adapted from the best-selling autobiography of Wallis Dirie, a black model born in Somalia.