‘Khartoum’ Review: Experimental Doc Poignantly Captures the Crisis in Sudan
In April 2023, violence erupted between Sudan’s military and Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group previously affiliated with the government. The brutal clash plunged an already fragile nation into more distressing circumstances. Aid agencies declared Sudan’s humanitarian crisis the worst in the world and relayed the African country’s dire situation through frightening statistics: 11 million people displaced, 25 million hungry and more than half the population in need of critical aid.
Numbers, though useful, can have a numbing effect, because stats can’t measure intangible losses — the details that texture lives. The filmmakers behind Khartoum, a poignant documentary of survival and hope, have an implicit knowledge of that. Their film, which premiered at Sundance before screening at Berlin, is a thoughtful and experimental melange focused on five Sudanese people forced to evacuate Khartoum after RSF soldiers invaded the city. Led by a collective of British and Sudanese directors, these participants vividly recount stories about life before and on the cusp of the war. They write and act in brief scenes, attempting to communicate the scale of trauma inflicted by this violence.
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Similarly to From Ground Zero, an anthology film by Palestinian artists in Gaza, Khartoum blends fiction and documentary to relay hopeful stories about Sudan and its people. And like Robert Greene’s Procession and Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters, the film offers another example of participatory filmmaking as a mode of healing.
Khartoum will help outsiders understand the crisis in Sudan, but it also functions as a tool for those impacted by the war. The most affecting parts of the film speak, I think, directly to Sudan, its people and their future. The stories told by these participants — Lokain and Wilson, two children who collect bottles to survive; Jawad, a resistance committee volunteer; Khadmallah, a single mother and owner of a tea stall; and Majdi, a civil servant — engage with a history of resilience and revolution, showing how a population negotiates its identity while fighting for enduring self-determination.
The collective behind Khartoum includes four emerging Sudanese filmmakers — Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy, Timeea M. Ahmed — and the British director Phil Cox (The Bengali Detective). A title card shown at the start of the film explains how violence altered the scope of the project. Before the war, the directors planned to document life in the city through the experience of their five participants, but the RSF invasion forced them to evacuate to Kenya and change their approach. The resulting film weaves iPhone footage captured before heavy bombing in Khartoum with the re-enactments and surrealist stories filmed on a soundstage. Khartoum’s patchwork quality attests to the behind-the-scenes struggles.
In the opening narratives, the subjects recount where they were when violence broke out. Majdi explains how RSF soldiers threatened him, while Lokain and Wilson remember the sound of jets flying overhead and bombs being dropped. The kids recall dismembered bodies strewn across the roads. “There was one guy who had no head,” they say, “another whose face was burned.” Khadmallah remembers lulling her frightened daughter to sleep with songs; and Jawad recounts a conversation with his parents about how the war would be over in 15 days. (It’s been nearly two years.) Later, Jawad will talk about joining resistance efforts by transporting injured protesters on his motorbike while Majdi admits that the idea of joining the revolution terrified him.
Heartbreak and a bruising sense of loss unite the stories told in Khartoum. Majdi explains the joy he took in attending parties with friends and family before the war, while Khadmallah mourns the community built around her tea stall. In one scene, we see her booth before the bombs. The camera pans across the faces of people debating politics, exchanging daily happenings and considering the future they want for their country. When one person exclaims that the citizens need a real revolution, the others nod in agreement. These conversations offer brief insight into Sudan’s history. They bridge the distance created by statistics, reminding viewers that the seeds of real resistance always come from the people. Khadmallah, through voiceover, wonders about the fate of her regulars, the neighbors who once relied on her for a warm beverage and conversation.
While Khadmallah meditates on her past, Lokain and Wilson contemplate their future. The two young children met in the neighborhood and shared a bicycle before collecting bottles. “We’re best buddies,” Lokain says at one point, with a shy smile. There’s a tender awkwardness to their onscreen moments, which underscores their youth. Scenes of their life before the war show a pair of tough salesmen, running around the neighborhood declaring that the rubbish and plastic bottles are their treasures and gold. A solemn moment, in which they recount how adults mistreat and misunderstand them, explains their fierce commitment to one another.
The young children also find a makeshift family with the other participants. Khartoum is as much a process documentary as it is a testament to healing and artistic expression. We see moments of the filmmakers and the subjects at work, negotiating what scenes to shoot and guiding how their stories are told. They also engage in lengthy conversations, processing their country’s reality aloud. Particularly telling moments include when Lokain and Wilson ask the adults why there is even fighting to begin with. The responses given by Majdi and Khadmallah, respectively, reveal the bitter illogic that governs war.
For all the ways it renders and translates the brutality of this conflict, Khartoum never entertains despair. The filmmakers help the participants not only articulate their dreams, but realize them through surrealist narratives. In one, Lokain and Wilson ride on a CGI-conjured lion through Khartoum, finding treasures amid the wreckage. The adults, for their stupidity, are relegated to fools while the kids are kings. In this future, hope reigns supreme, routines are no longer a privilege and fighting becomes unimaginable.
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