The 12th Edition of the Ajyal Film Festival, organized by the Doha Film Institute, opened on Nov. 16 with Hind Meddeb’s documentary "Sudan, Remember Us." This was a very important decision by the institute, which has programmed a "Voices from Palestine" section in the festival and has invited many directors from the region to discuss the challenges of filming and distributing in a time of genocide. Choosing a Sudanese film to start the proceedings in Doha sends the much-needed message that focusing on Palestine should not detract from other stories from the region.
"Sudan, Remember Us" is a France, Tunisia and Qatar coproduction about the street protests in Khartoum, which started after the failure of the political class to instate a civil government after the fall of Omar al-Bashir. The film director, Hind Meddeb, based in Paris, is of Tunisian, Moroccan and Algerian descent, and she frames the documentary as a correspondence between her and some of the young people who take to the streets to ensure a civil government. Meddeb’s focus on the poetry of the protestors comes as no surprise when one considers the professions of her parents: one a poet, the other a linguist. The perfect fusha Arabic of the Sudanese and their ability to jam poetry on the go as they prepare to face soldiers is truly awe-inspiring. It is also eerie to be sitting in a cinema with Qataris who themselves have a rich Arabic poetry tradition, watching how the Sudanese, all the way in Africa, have taken the language of the peninsula to new heights.
Meddeb’s genius in the documentary is finding the right cast of characters who will take us through Sudan’s story of protest. Anyone who has been to Sudan will attest to the grace of the Sudanese people and their embodiment of Islam as a way of being. In the press interview, Meddeb pointed to the earned trust that Sudanese women protestors had in male protestors and how no cases of harassment had been reported, unlike some protests in other parts of the Arab world. In the film, the young women’s confidence comes through in their interaction with the men and the camera. More important still is their relationship with one another and how joyful they are to have found one another through the resistance movement.
"When you kill one of us, it’s like you have killed all young people," one of the protest poets recites as the others are setting up a street dinner. This is a direct reference to the Quran, which many young people seem to take as a reference for their protest. Meddeb is very good at capturing these moments where these young Sudanese take refuge in their belief in their struggle against oppression. While a young woman is reading the Quran in one corner, others are painting a wall with the faces of fallen comrades.
But of course, this is not a purely Muslim story, the film shows women of different faiths coming together and talking about the future of the country. Meddeb focuses on making and wearing different prayer beads, the markers of the several chants that the protestors sing on the street. Despite the fact that Sudan has presented many challenges to its youth through the decades in terms of imagining a future (also explored in another DFI-funded film, "You Will Die at Twenty"), here we have these young people during the height of the protests, saying that they can now imagine a future in their own country seeing that so many people, young and old, are for change. As one of the chants in the documentary says, it is there at that moment that matters, the moment when Sudan really belongs to the Sudanese. The documentary insists on lingering on this moment of art, beauty, and resistance even if we, as viewers, know that this moment will be crushed violently. The film ends with an epilogue on an update of our characters, all the young people who wanted to make Sudan a better place. Like so many youths affected by violent regimes, they have left their country.
Because what is happening in Sudan is so complicated – and this adjective has become a cop-out for not engaging in a situation – few documentarists venture to provide the political and historical context of the Sudanese protests and the current violence. Meddeb, too, stays away from trying to "explain" the situation and the warring factions, and her focus is Khartoum. But she has chosen to engage with it in the small way that she can to capture the energy and hopes of the Sudanese youth. She says that she was approached by Sudanese friends in Paris to go and film as she would have an easier time doing it as a foreigner. And as a foreigner, she must have felt even less well-placed to "explain." The film does what it can to remind us of the situation there and the beautiful people suffering under it.
"Sudan, Remember Us" may help raise awareness of what is happening in Sudan, but it is naive at this stage to hope that public awareness can produce relief on the ground in any conflict. In my mind, the film’s best function will be its contribution to the Sudanese archive of how the young people fought, and if it manages to reach a Sudanese audience, it will inspire a future generation to hold up the resistance.
