Hot Picks: The Real Mo Farah

The shocking backstory of Olympic runner Mo Farah is told in this doc from Red Bull Studios, revealing for the first time that the young Farah was illegally trafficked to the UK from Somaliland and helped by his school to obtain British citizenship through deception.

In the doc, Farah visits his family village in Somaliland to ask his mother and twin brother what they know of the traumatic childhood event, and speaks to London’s Somali community in the hopes of understanding why it happened.

New entrant in the distribution market Red Bull Studios co-produced the doc alongside Atomized Studios.

“The Real Mo Farah is an exceptional story that has never been told before and represents everything we hoped for as our launch into the marketplace,” says Red Bull Studios global head Bernadette McDaid.

McDaid expects plenty of interest from the US and Europe due to Farah’s fame and sports credentials, but also believes the doc has wider appeal due to the film’s “powerful human narrative” of triumph against the odds.

As with all Red Bull Studios’ sports docs, there is no narration. “It is a conscious choice to let them tell their own stories,” says McDaid. “It makes them more empathetic, and it also allows the audience to be immersed in that journey and experience it in real time, rather than being told what to think.”

The production required an exceptional level of security and confidentiality and took 18 months to complete, largely due to the time it took to track down people who had been part of Farah’s childhood, some of whom he had lost contact with entirely, and the need for the filmmakers to give Farah and his family time to process new discoveries.

In the doc, Farah expresses his uncertainty around the consequences of revealing this truth, which made worldwide headlines and the front pages of eight UK newspapers after the doc aired in July.

“It came as something of a shock when the Home Office declined to take action to remove his citizenship, and to find most people being positive and supportive of Mo,” says McDaid. “It made me proud of humanity.”