“A powerful document that starts and ends in fittingly poetic ways, but takes on a journalistic approach in documenting struggle.”
“You will know that I am the embers that never die out”
As the world focuses on a war crime-littered conflict in Gaza, where nearly 2 million people are trapped without much in terms of food and medicine, not all that far south of it a humanitarian disaster of even bigger proportions has been quietly developing for over five years. A conflict that sadly doesn’t get as much attention in Western media, the Sudanese Civil War that broke out in 2023 after a four-year lead-up has cost the lives of an estimated 150,000 people and displaced well over 8 million people. “Here in France, there’s not much talk about the war in Sudan,” laments Hind Meddeb, director of the emphatic and powerful documentary Sudan, Remember Us, a film that focuses on the resilience of young Sudanese people in the period between the fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and the outbreak of the civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in April of 2023. A portrait of resistance that puts women front and center, Sudan, Remember Us is an aptly titled film about a largely ignored and almost forgotten conflict that has all the hallmarks of a genocide.
The film begins in 2023, with shots of the deserted streets of Khartoum accompanied by a voice call between Meddeb and one of the women she had been following for four years; the opening shots are somewhat reminiscent of Berlin title Intercepted, Oksana Karpovych’s brilliant portrait of a war-torn Ukraine. The situation is dire, that much is clear. “From my windows, I see a dead city,” says a voice on the other end of the line in a later conversation. How did it get to this? The film then travels back in time to 2019, when after months of protests a massive sit-in forces al-Bashir, who had ruled the country with an iron fist for 30 years, to step down. The atmosphere among the protesters is hopeful and determined, especially after the initial success of ousting their dictator. This changes to fear and despair on the last night of Ramadan, as security forces violently break up the sit-in, killing over 100 people in what is known as the ‘Khartoum Massacre’. Despite this protests continue, and an alliance of protesters and the military government reach an agreement. Eighteen months later, when rule was supposed to be transitioned to civilians for the next one-and-a-half years, a military coup by general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan throws Sudan into another period of turbulent violence and oppression. But Maha, Shajane, Muzamil, Khattab, and all the other young people that Meddeb films as they are fighting for freedom and a fair government refuse to back down, even if they risk persecution. The film ends where it began, in 2023, as al-Burhan and his deputy Hemedti get into a power struggle that leads to Sudan’s bloody civil war.
This is where one wishes that the film had continued and documented the atrocities committed during the first year of civil war. But as the closing title cards make clear, most of the people she filmed have fled Khartoum and Sudan, fearing for their lives. That leaves a film which is somehow missing a final act, although that is more a result of circumstance and not a fault of the director, who has created a gripping near-firsthand account of a country in turmoil where the youth, the ones thought to have it too easy and to not have any political interest, stand at the forefront of resistance armed with, surprisingly, music and poetry (and a touch of humor; as one sign at a road block reads, “Sorry for the delay, uprooting a regime“). Like veritable Bob Dylans, the young protesters put their frustrations, their anger, their fears into raps, poems, and unwavering chants. Poetry is life in Sudan, and the words of its biggest dissidents from the past still carry forward generations of unsatisfied Sudanese. As a portrayal of the voices of a revolution against the fire of oppressing forces, and a chronicle of tenacious young people steadfast in their striving for a better life, Sudan, Remember Us is a powerful document that starts and ends in fittingly poetic ways, but takes on a journalistic approach in documenting struggle.