A documentary exploring the fate of Sudan’s cultural institutions during wartime which was made with the help of King’s College London (KCL) researchers premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
Khartoum was shown on 27 January at the annual festival in Utah, and was co-produced by British independent film company Native Films and the Sudan Film Factory, followed by it’s European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival from 13-23 February.
KCL academics Professor Marilyn Deegan, Professor Erica Carter, and a King’s Global Cultures Institute Fellow joined as collaborators in 2024, helping find images for animations illustrating experiences of war and displacement.
Professor Carter said: “What’s happened since the beginning of the war is that libraries, galleries, and museums are being burned down.
“They are being looted, particularly by the rapid support forces, but atrocities are being committed on both sides.”
The film depicts the experiences of five individuals in the Sudanese capital Khartoum following the overthrow of former President Omar al-Bashir in 2019, who was charged with genocide and war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
Filming began in 2022, but was put on hold in April 2023 when civil war broke out.
Since then, the war has displaced more than 11million people, including the film’s Sudanese directors and key characters.
After many months of trying to relocate production of the film to East Africa, it was completed through a combination of live-action story telling, animation, green screens, and documentary extracts displaying life and Sudan, before and after the war began.
Native Voice producers Phil Cox and Giovanna Stopponi worked alongside directors Rawia Alhag, Anas Saaed, Timeea M, and Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmed, using images from Professor Deegan’s project Sudan Memory to illustrate Khartoum’s streets and histories.
Professor Deegan’s project aims to preserve Sudan’s cultural archives through digitisation, using an online platform which is open for public access.
She said: “Working with the Native Voice team has highlighted how vital the work was that we did in Sudan Memory.
“Much of the cultural content we made available on the site is almost certainly now lost, so being able to publicize it further through initiatives like the Khartoum film will bring the richness of the culture and the tragedy of its loss to a wider public.”
Over the past seven years, Sudan Memory has launched digitisation facilities in a range of cultural institutions and aims to build capacity by training archive and museum staff as well as independent collectors and culture practitioners in the country.
Professor Carter said: “A lot of cultural heritage is being lost, and the Sudan Memory has become an even more important resource now because there are 43 digitized collections, which hold photos, documents, videos, audio.
“It has become an online museum of Sudanese heritage.
“It’s like London being occupied – what do you do if you’re trying to make a film about London?
“You can’t shoot the river, you can’t shoot neighbourhoods, you can’t because you are making a film about a city which is inaccessible to you.”
Professor Carter explaind KCL researchers are aiming to use their resources to help Sudanese artists and organizations, which will enable filmmakers to capture stories about the country.
She added there has been a renaissance of Sudanese filmsince the revolution, but argued that much of the western media’s simple depiction Sudan as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises leads to it being overlooked.
Professor Carter said: “That just becomes a cliche if nothing is done about it, and it becomes one of the reasons that the crisis is being ignored.
“The voices that need to be heard are the voices of Sudanese people who are living through this catastrophe.
“The voices of people want to move freely on the streets, want to be able to express themselves, want to throw off a dictatorship and live a different kind of life.
“The film also shows that the children are phenomenal; they’re cheerful, they’re resilient, they have dreams about their futures.
“It’s storytelling, and that’s what we need. We need stories, and this film gives us so many stories.”
Featured image credit: Native Voice Films
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