Khartoum: Sudan’s first film screened at Sundance Film Festival

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28 January 2024

As the shelling over control of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, continues, 200 people crammed into watch the premiere screening of “Khartoum”, Sudan’s first documentary film ever featured at the prestigious film festival in the United States.

The film, now set to premiere in several other film festivals, was directed by four Sudanese directors: Anas Saeed, Ibrahim Ahmad (“Snoopy”), Rawia Al-Hag, and Timmea Ahmed and British writer and director, Phil Cox. Produced in partnership with Ayin Media, Native Voice Films, and Sudan Film Factory, the creative documentary follows the lives of five distinct Sudanese characters from the metropolis Khartoum in their journey from civil resistance to a military coup and now, conflict. The characters: a civil servant, a tea lady, a resistance committee volunteer, and two street boys all have their stories unexpectedly woven together through street revolutions, animated dreams, and a civil war.

Lokain (11) amd Wilson (12) are two feisty young plastic bottle collectors who live and work in an infamous slum on the outskirts of Khartoum called Jabarouna. The fearless boys, best friends since they decided to share a bicycle together, run their own plastic bottle collecting gang in their neighbourhood.

Direct Anas Saeed, a long time cameraman with experience covering events in Sudan, including the pro-democracy protests that swept the nation prior to the conflict, said it was a proud moment to see a diverse audience view the film and reflect on a country that they may have had few references to in the past. “The interaction from the audience was emotionally moving and positive after watching these stories from Sudan,” he said.

Khadmallah (27) is a single mother of Rita (7) and a tea vendor who came to Khartoum from the Nuba Mountains. Determined to be a good mother to her daughter, she works tirelessly to expand her roadside tea stall and keep her customers happy alongside teaching her daughter maths.

In many ways, the collective experience Sudanese have faced in Sudan’s now 21 month long conflict is reflected in the lives of the directors and characters themselves. The UN estimates nearly 12 million people are displaced from the conflict, the highest rate in the world. So too were the directors and subjects of the film. Once the war started in mid-April 2023, a small independent film first initiated in 2022 in Khartoum was suddenly burdened by bombing raids from army warplanes in the sky and armed Rapid Support Forces (RSF) soldiers roaming the streets on the ground.

“At th beginning we wanted to reflect on the normal life of Sudanese people, paying homage to the city of Khartoum,” says director Ibrahim Ahmad. “When the war happened we had to shift that direction but at the same time we did not go far from our original sentiment. We wanted the film to resonate with a wider audience.”

Majdi (45) is a civil servant working for the Sudanese government. He is obliged to continue working despite a state apparatus that has fallen apart with little functioning amidst revolutionary protests, violence, repression, and an impending war. Majdi seeks refuge in his office, daydreaming and discussing his love of racing pigeons with his son.

To creative director Phil Cox, the war was a challenging moment for the film, where all the directors and participants had to ask themselves the difficult question whether to continue. “We arrived at a pivotal moment after April 2023 where we realised that, first of all, we had to priortise the safety and the lives of the filmmakers and the participants beyond the film,” Cox told Ayin. “And that was an easy choice, we put all the money for the team to get them out [of Sudan]. The difficult choice was then how do we to continue with no money and our original film gone.”

Miraculously, the film managed to survive in exile and continued filming through innovative cinematic storytelling, combining animation, green screen reconstructions, and documentary ‘dreamscapes’ to tell their stories. To the filmmakers, the documentary tells a wider audience about the under-reported lives of the Sudanese and the current crisis within the country.

Jawad (28) is a Sufi Rastafarian working for the resistance committees—voluntary, pro-democracy civil groups that helped topple former dictator Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. A warm extrovert, frustrated at being single with dreams of being a famous actor, he works as a motorcycle volunteer, carrying those wounded and injured in protests against military rule.

According to Cox, it is also acts as a critical historical record of a once vibrant metropolis. Throughout the conflict, priceles artefacts, libraries, and cultural landmarks have been broken, burnt -even sold via e-bay. Using rare cultural content collected by academics at King’s College London, the film fills the gaps in filming using archival materials, including contemporary images, album covers, airplane tickets, and countryside scenes, to reconstruct the world left behind.

*A Sufi during Friday’s prayers at the Hamid al-Nil Mosque (Archive)*

“We wish our film to be a valuable piece of archive for the future and a poetic tribute to Khartoum and its people and to all the people of Sudan at this pivotal moment in our nation’s history,” the directors said in a collective statement. “The film represents our resistance to war and our belief in the Sudanese people to overcome.”