Director: Hind Meddeb

French-Tunisian-Moroccan journalist and filmmaker Meddeb’s vital and rousing documentary examines the troubled situation in Sudan from ground level, while nodding to the country’s rich literary history. In 2019 Meddeb embedded herself with young Sudanese activists, following the overthrow of the dictator Omar al-Bashir who had been in power for thirty years. The protestors were now demanding action from the newly installed and increasingly authoritarian military leadership. Female activists interviewed talked hopefully about their country’s struggle and the role of feminism in the protest movement. In June of that year, however, the military violently broke up a sit-in demonstration. As the situation worsened, it became evident that the military government had no intention of ceding their power to a citizens’ government as had been agreed. Street-level footage unsparingly captures the brutality of the government crackdown. Over the subsequent four years, Meddeb catches up with her subjects who are shaken but remain defiant and tentatively optimistic. In what is a bracingly original approach, the filmmaker focuses on the power of the spoken and written word in the protest movement with lengthy sequences of comradely dialogue, and most excitingly, scenes of young activists bolstering and driving each other on with poetry recitations, often in the middle of the protests.

David Willoughby

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