Franco-Tunisian-Moroccan film-maker Hind Meddeb is based in Paris but it was her on-the-spot experience in Khartoum in 2019 of the Sudanese uprising against the reactionary 30-year rule of president Omar al-Bashir which has led to this intensely engaged and sympathetic documentary study. The film immerses itself in the world of the protesters – particularly the young and female protesters – a whole generation energised and brought together by the insurgent movement; their passion was complicated and intensified by the fact that the revolution, at least at first, only brought in a “Transitional Military Council” or TMC, which did not seem in any great hurry to transition to democratic civilian rule. In fact, it carried out a grotesque massacre against people at a sit-in in June 2019, resulting in 127 people dead and 70 cases of rape.
Meddeb finds among the protesters a vivid, vibrant artistic movement: an oral culture of music, poetry and rap which flourishes on the streets. There is also a kind of subversive, surrealist energy: the camera finds a mock traffic roadworks sign reading: “Sorry for the Delay – Uprooting a Regime”. The most amazing performances from both women and men are witnessed, as well as a kind of soixante-huitard culture of slogans and maxims; young women hold up signs and prose-poems.
Above all, the protesters are suspicious of theocracy and the prevalence of a clerical class who have a great love of bullying the populace; one woman remembers a preacher who insisted on the virtues of poverty for everyone else while owning a sleek four-wheel drive. “The people demand justice for the dead!” declaims one banner; this is a movement which is passionately aware of its fallen comrades, betrayed by those who were ushered into power by their sacrifice and courage.
