Sudan, Remember Us

The streets are empty. A plastic bag swirls in the air. A single bird lands in the dust. The silence is broken by a fighter plane firing a missile. Cell phone footage shows heavily armed soldiers unleashing their machine guns. It is April 2023, and we closely follow a few young people to witness how the war in Sudan is destroying a whole generation like them.

Director Hind Meddeb first visited the capital Khartoum in 2019. There she met the young artists and activists Shajane, Muzamil, Maha, Rufaida, Hamza and Eros. Back then they were in a much more optimistic frame of mind. The dictatorial regime had just been deposed and they were fighting for freedom and democracy with strikes and extended sit-ins.

Sudan, Remember Us shows how these young people are trying to energize their revolution with poetry and music, despite arrests and the bloody putdown of protests. “Words are stronger than bullets,” is their mantra. For a long time fear was muffled by hope, fragments of which Meddeb brings together in this film.