Sudan, Remember Us: Poetry, hope and friendship at heart of documentary about war

Hind Meddeb's moving piece is being screened at the Marrakech International Film Festival

Sudan, Remember Us depicts the mirth that overtook Khartoum after the overthrow of Omar Al Bashir, and the violent military crackdown that followed. AP

“Every film I do is a story of friendship,” Hind Meddeb says. Her newest work, a documentary called Sudan, Remember Us, is no different.

When Sudanese president Omar Al Bashir was overthrown in 2019, the filmmaker had just finished Paris Stalingrad, a documentary that sheds light on the experiences of refugees in the French capital. Many of those Meddeb interviewed for the film and befriended were Sudanese. Along with the other refugees in the Stalingrad district, they were waiting for their asylum status to clear, sleeping in the streets and being harassed by the police.

“It was happening right outside my house,” Meddeb tells The National. “My neighbours and I were going every day to help them, bringing food and letting them into our homes to shower. We also helped translate their asylum papers.”

She adds that most of the Sudanese refugees she met had been imprisoned by Al Bashir’s regime, and when the government was overthrown, she says: "It was like their dream coming true.”

“They were so excited about the revolution in Sudan,” she continues. “But they couldn’t go back because they were in the process of their asylum papers. They told me that I could go though. They really wanted me to see where they come from.”

Meddeb’s Sudanese friends encouraged her to travel to Khartoum to witness the revolution, offering contacts to help show her around. Meddeb landed in Khartoum to witness the city in a state of euphoria.

The first part of Sudan, Remember Us shows this. The documentary, screening at the Marrakech International Film Festival, depicts the jubilee and hope that swept the capital immediately after Al Bashir was deposed. People called for a citizen’s government to be formed while chanting, reciting poetry and singing in the streets.

“I found myself in the middle of the sit-in,” Meddeb narrates in the documentary to footage of cheerful crowds. “I joined in the festivities. Maybe because my mother is from Morocco and Algeria, and my father is from Tunisia your poetic Arabic took me back to my roots.”

The documentary is filled with interviews that offer a concrete understanding of what the Sudanese people had been facing under Al Bashir’s rule, and the hope they had for change.

“The revolution changed everything,” Shajane Suliman, one of the interviewees, says in the film. “We realised that the country belongs to us. We discovered what patriotic feeling is. We realised we had rights.”

However, the dream soon changed into a nightmare of violence and brutality. In June 2019, on the eve of Eid Al Fitr, Sudanese security forces descended on the protestors, killing and sexually assaulting dozens. Meddeb wasn’t in Khartoum that day, but the documentary features footage taken on mobile phones.

“When you see these videos of the military taking the woman away, they're taking them away to rape them. It was horrible,” Meddeb says.

She says she didn’t want to embed much footage of the clashes as she didn’t want to “embrace the military storytelling”. However, it was necessary to show how the armed forces were pulling women away from the crowds to communicate the gravity of the events. “The images are unbearable,” she says. “But I wanted to put them because I wanted the people to understand the level of violence.”

In fact, up until the crackdown, Meddeb says she had been to show her Sudanese friends in Paris the mirth in Khartoum. After the violence unfolded, her plans for the footage changed.

“I didn't know I was going to do a film,” she says. “I was just documenting a historical moment, and I was really filming for my friends. I thought when I got back to Paris, I would edit this footage, show it to my friends and we could organise a night for Sudan with music. After June 3, I knew I had to do a movie.”

Sudan, Remember Us offers a gripping perspective of the struggle to form a citizen’s government in the face of military rule. It takes viewers behind the scenes of protests, as Sudan’s younger generation gathers in cafes to discuss how they can confront the unraveling injustices as activists.

It also shows how poetry has been used as an instrument of protest in Sudan for decades, referencing the works of poets such as Mohammad Alhassan Salim, better known as Hummaid, and Muhammad Al Gaddal.

One of the film’s stars is Maad Shaykhun, who is often regarded as the poetic voice of Sudanese activists. The film concludes with a poetry recitation by Shaykhun. It comes as a streak of hope in a present marred by a grim and violent reality, where some of Sudan’s brightest minds have been forced to flee the country due to the war, which Meddeb says is a bloody tool “to silence the civil society and the great Sudanese people”.

“I start with the war and I end with a poem of hope because I'm already thinking of the future,” Meddeb says. “I think this film is for the next generation, for the children of the activists, to keep a memory of something beautiful, of the Sudanese people standing up. I don't want to show the people miserable.”

She says a large driver of the film was to highlight recent events in Sudan, a conflict that has often been sidelined by international news agencies. However, it also seeks to confront how the Arab world is depicted in the West. “I hate the way they represent the Arab world and Africa,” she says. "And that's why this is so important to me.”

The documentary, which had its international premiere at the Venice Film Festival, was met with a standing ovation. However, bringing Sudan, Remember Us back to the Arab world has been even more gratifying. At Doha’s Ajyal Film Festival last month, the documentary won the Audience Award.

"We were really celebrated,” she says. “It’s the same here in Morocco, we are being celebrated.”

Yet, there is one disheartening aspect of the film’s festival journey to consider, Meddeb notes. “Most of my interviews are with Arab press,” she says, explaining how the issue in Sudan still seems to be of little interest to the western world.

“Same in Venice, only Arab press interviewed us. It's terrible when you think about it. But I don’t care, we continue. We do things for history. It’s a long-term battle.”