In 2019, French-Tunisian journalist and documentary filmmaker Hind Meddeb flew to Sudan after the overthrow of hated dictator Omar al-Bashir, hoping to chronicle the dream of an Arab country shaken up by a feminist revolution. The young pro-democracy activists, mostly women, she met at a sit-in protest outside army headquarters in Khartoum became the focus of Sudan, Remember Us, which she filmed over the next four years.
However, this sad and lyrical movie didn’t turn out quite the way she’d imagined. The revolution was hijacked by a violent military crackdown and civil war that have now left Sudan in ruins.
“I still can’t believe what happened happened,” Meddeb says on a subsequent visit, in 2023. “From my window I see a dead city. This country has changed, into an open-air prison.”
Her camera roams Khartoum, its gonzo blend of handheld and smartphone footage, skilfully edited by Gladys Joujou, mixing long takes of passing traffic or mist on the Nile, with tracking shots out of car windows, while a voiceover details murders, torture and imprisonment. The effect is undeniably harrowing but also somehow surreal, as if we were stealing glimpses of a people living in exile in their country.
Often Meddeb steps beyond traditional documentary techniques to explore a soixante-huitard culture of agitprop, poetry, music and rap that lies at the heart of Sudan’s fight for freedom. On a ferry trip up the Nile, a couple of twentysomethings, Shajane and Maha, sing along to Ibrahim al-Kashif’s patriotic song “Land of Goodness”, which became the revolution’s anthem: “I am Sudanese, I am African/Moving forward, head held high.”
Those lyrics date back to the early years of Sudan’s independence in the late 1950s. Yet they continue to inspire today’s young revolutionaries. “Poetry is eternal,” observes Shajane. So is youthful hope, and it illuminates this poignant film about a lost revolution – a lost generation too, perhaps, because its four protagonists are now living in exile in other countries, having left Sudan as refugees: Shajane and Maha to the UAE and Khatab to Egypt, while Muzamil studies computer programming at a university in Bangalore.
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