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Last Hijack’s (2014) animated sequences are dark, dreamlike transcendental renderings that look like someone armed the love child of Abiyoyo and The Polar Express with AK-47s. They are occasionally metaphoric in nature, like the film’s opening sequence that shows Mohamed transforming into a huge eagle that soars above the ocean and picks up a freighter, free and powerful with unstoppable momentum. Or one near the end of the film where the eagle form fails and sends him careening to the water, leaving him helpless and alone as a miniscule speck in the vast emptiness of the sea.

But more frequently, animation is used to take the film to places the cameras can’t reach - the past, the safe room of a ship during a hijacking - to let us view the more complicated and violent areas of Mohamed’s existence. Without this tactic, the documentary would have been neat, but rather dry on raw footage alone. It’s a more effective and visually stimulating way of giving history than reading subtitles for a Somali interview.

“Without the animated sequences, Last Hijack would have been a somewhat interesting, rare look inside a community that’s usually only seen from the outside. Mohamed’s claims about the draws of piracy—money, status, girls—are shallow ones. But the dark, surreal animation unearths the personal side of the story: its nightmarish aspect and traumas. It elevates the film into a portrait of an unspeakable tragedy. The animated scenes don’t excuse Mohamed’s behavior, but they do offer a poetic, contemplative explanation.” - The Dissolve