You Will Die At Twenty, the feature debut of director Amjad Abu Alala and Sudan’s very first Oscar entry for Best International Feature Film, will open in virtual cinema on January 22, 2021. Starring Mustafa Shehata, Moatasem Rashid, Islam Mubarak, Mahmoud Alsarraj,Bonna Khalid and Talal Afifi, the film is only the eighth narrative feature filmed in Sudan.

You Will Die At Twenty follows a child — portended to die at age 20 — as he and his mother navigate the uncharted space between coming of age and facing the end.

An exceptional story, You Will Die At Twenty follows Muzamil (played first by Moatasem Rashid then as a teen by Mustafa Shehata), whose death at age 20 is prophesied on the day of his birth by a traveling sheik. Growing up with his mother, Sakina (Islam Mubarak), in a small village under the constant loom of death, the young boy becomes increasingly curious about what it means to live beyond his mother’s confines. And, encouraged by local elders, his overprotective mother relents and allows her son to study the Quran with the other children his age. In this newly found freedom, Muzamil finds friends, enemies, love, and tempters, though what he truly seeks is a sense of the present and a chance at the future.