Minnesota Filmmaker Yasmin Yassin Bridges Science, Culture, and Art in “Woman Land”

Yasmin Yassin’s Woman Land depicts the lives of two Somali American sisters, played by Nadira Hussein and Hodan Hassan, living in the Twin Cities. Yasmin Yassin

If you attended the 2026 Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, among the many films on offer—both short and feature-length, from a wide array of genres and perspectives—you may have encountered the locally made narrative short Woman Land. Prior to making its local debut at the festival, it was selected for the 2026 Tampere Film Festival International Competition in Finland, one of Europe’s most prestigious festivals for short films.

Woman Land was directed and written by Yasmin Yassin, who is originally from Canada but has since made her home here in Minneapolis. Shot and set entirely in South Minneapolis, the film follows two sisters, Hafsa and Sumaya, who set up an online matchmaking service. It’s a coming-of age story that looks at generational divides and how we see the community around us. Yassin found it particularly fascinating to linger on settings that many of see and take for granted every day and explore how our cultural lenses (in this case, the lens of the sisters’ Somali community) can color how we see and interact with these locations.

“One thing I find really fascinating about Lake Street in particular is that it’s like this heart-beating street in that it runs through the city like an aorta,” she explained to me as we met for coffee at one of Minneapolis’s Five Watt Coffee locations. The day was cloudy and threatening rain, but the shop was abuzz with business, blenders, and the consistent hum of conversation. Yassin was soft-spoken, yet confident when it came to detailing the passion she felt for her art.

“I remember taking my crew to Karmel Mall,” she continued, “and they said, ‘We grew up and we’ve never been here before.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean you’ve never been? It’s like a block away from Bryant Lake Bowl, which you said you’ve all been!’ So it’s interesting to see the parallel lives that were happening within the same area, and it made wonder if I could kind of peel back the layers of a subculture of people that … are sharing the same street as you, the same environment as you, but have a completely different view of those streets and environments.”

Hafsa and Sumaya walk by the Bryant Lake Bowl on Lake Street. Yasmin Yassin

Yassin crafted a sequence that directly reflects this story in Woman Land, which finds her characters walking past the Bryant Lake Bowl without much notice, as it doesn’t have as much significance to them. The place of significance they’re headed to is just a few blocks away.

As our conversation continued, it was clear that Yassin had a very particular way of exploring the world around her and really seeing the city in ways that others might not. Part of that she attributes to moving here later in life; she spent much of her first year here biking around the Twin Cities and photographing whatever she found interesting. But another part of that stems from her background as a scientist.

“I went to school at UBC on the west coast in Vancouver, and I fell in love with microbiology,” she said. “I ended up working with DNA research and epigenetics.” Epigenetics is the study of how our environment influences genes by changing the chemicals attached to them. Essentially, if certain people are more susceptible to certain things in life, what influences both generationally and environmentally could potentially flip a genetic switch?

From there, Yassin continued her work in science, ultimately landing on a career in public health. However, she always maintained an interest in the creative arts and began to notice how her background in science could translate to working in film.

“I ended up designing a lot of my experiments,” she said. “It was very design-heavy. I think you realize when it comes to stuff like lab work, you’re … on the whiteboard, you’re ideating, you’re sitting in groups—you’re really doing design work.” This work, she said, is very similar to directing. “There’s a parallel process to it all.”

With her unique eye for capturing settings, knack for framing intergenerational and cultural contexts, and this background in scientific design, observation, and research, Yasmin Yassin is a local filmmaker to watch. Woman Land will continue its run at different festivals, and she is already hard at work on her next short film, a psychological drama with elements of horror.

“It’s definitely a challenge and departure from what I’ve done,” she said. “But it’s examining the parasocial relationships that we have through social media, or in general. I kind of say it’s ‘people watching people watching people.’ I kind of play into that idea of surveillance, but wanting to be an object, and desire—not necessarily as a negative thing—but tapping into that human behavior of wanting to be watched.”

While her next film doesn’t currently have a release date, you can find any updates on her work through her website, YasminYassin.com.