“First Night”- Community Film Screening with Syracuse Filmmaker Rayan Mohamed

Join us for screening of Rayan Mohamed’s new film First Night.
On her first night of resettlement in the United States, a young refugee girl confronts stress, anxiety, and loneliness as she struggles to adjust to an unfamiliar new home.
First Night is an experiential fiction film that immerses the viewer in the disorienting, fragile experience of resettlement. The story follows Layla, a young refugee spending her first night in the United States. Rather than relying on conventional narrative, the film unfolds through textures of sound, fragments of memory, and the quiet, uneasy rhythms of her new ‘home.’
Rayan Mohamed is a Somali American filmmaker. Her work explores storytelling as a tool of expression, healing, and care, with a focus on themes of migration, identity, and belonging.
Born in Somalia, Rayan and her family fled the country in 2008 due to ongoing conflict and lived in Awbare Refugee Camp in Ethiopia before resettling in Syracuse, NY, in 2014. These experiences deeply shape her creative vision, grounding her work in vulnerability, imagination, and connection—particularly in a world where displacement and migration continue to define so many lives.
Rayan was Narratio Fellow and 2025 artist-in resident, a 2023 Imagining America Fellow. She has led and collaborated on numerous community projects and directed multiple short films. Her films and projects have been featured or screened by National Geographic Photo Camp, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Syracuse University, the Richmond Virginia Museum of Art, The Daily Orange, the Connecticut Gallery, Syracuse News, and the North Side Learning Center, IA-national gathering conference among others.