cinematography
Hind Meddeb
editing
Gladys Joujou
music
Arthur H
sound
Hind Meddeb
Damien Tronchot

producer
Abel Nahmias
co-producers
Michel Zana
Alice Ormières
Taoufik Guiga
production
Echo Films
co-productions
Blue Train Films
My Way Production Tounès

with the support of
CNC
Quiet
CNC-CNCI
Doha Film Institute
AFAC
Region Ile de France
Fonds Image Francophone OIF
Final Cut in Venice
TitraFilm
MAD Solutions
Rai Cinema
Red Sea Fund
El Gouna Film Festival
Ateliers de l’Atlas – Festival International du Film de Marrakech
CPH:DOX

Shajane, Maha, Muzamil, and Khattab: all Sudanese in their twenties, politically active and artistically creative. This film is an ensemble effort, the collective portrait of a generation fighting for freedom with their words, poems and chants. Faced with a corrupt army responsible for war crimes in Darfur, Kordofan and the Blue Nile, they could easily have lost heart before they even started. Without the dream guiding them, the power of imagination and the might of poetic discourse, they would not have overthrown the former regime. The filmmaker Hind Meddeb followed these young Sudanese during the sit-in that lasted fifty-seven days outside the Army headquarters in Khartoum, then after they survived the 3th of June 2019 massacre – when the army attacked the sit-in, killing hundreds of people in a few hours, as they protested against the military coup. She continued up to the start of the war that caused death and destruction everywhere, forcing all of them to choose the path of exile.

2024 Soudan, souviens-toi (doc)
2019 Paris Stalingrad (doc)
2016 L’école du pouvoir (doc)
2016 Organisez-vous! (doc)
2015 Tunisia clash (doc)
2013 Méditérranéenes, mille et un combats (doc)
2013 Electro chaabi (doc)
2007 De casa au paradis (doc)

“In Sudan, reciting poetry is as natural as breathing. For the Sudanese, it’s a tool of resistance, emerging in conversations, in demonstrations, and on walls. […] As I progressed in my quest, I perceived the outlines of a new era that I would describe as ‘post-Islamist.’ During the thirty years of the dictatorship, religion was used to control people’s lives. Sudanese revolutionaries no longer want this. The new generation is campaigning for freedom of conscience, as described in this famous poem: ‘They kill us in the name of religion. But Islam tells us: rise up against tyrants! A bullet does not kill. Silence does.’ Sudan is at the crossroads of worlds that I have frequented since childhood. My parents left North Africa in the Seventies, searching for freedom in Europe. […] This film is about how to take on this impossible change. Standing in front of a powerful army, how can a pacific movement succeed in getting the citizens’ voices heard?” (Hind Meddeb)

Hind Meddeb grew up in France, Morocco and Tunisia, the latter two her countries of origin. This cross-pollination of cultures and languages has given her a unique way of looking at the world. In her documentaries, she observes all forms of resistance to the established order, filming from the side of those who rebel. In her approach to the Arab and African worlds, she seeks to break down the prejudices that constrain the Western imagination. Between 2011 and 2013, during the Arab Spring, she directed Tunisia Clash and Electro Chaabi, two feature-length documentaries on musical creation as a revolutionary act. Her previous film, Paris Stalingrad, follows the journey of Souleymane, a young Sudanese poet and survivor of the genocide in Darfur, who arrives in Paris.