REMEMBERING SUDAN

With the Sunday mati­nee panel, we want to deepen this series on the sit­u­a­tion in Sudan. Our guest is Aya El Sam­mani, who fled from Khar­toum to Berlin last year. In her book project OUR COLLECTIVE FRAGILE MEMORY, she col­lect­ed per­son­al moments and life jour­neys of people from Sudan. Also join­ing us is Roman Deck­ert, a Sudan ana­lyst who has worked on the coun­try for over 25 years and is cur­rent­ly with the Berlin non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion MiCT - Media in Coop­er­a­tion and Tran­si­tion. The third pan­elist is Talal Afifi, born in Ham­burg in 1976. He is a film cura­tor and pro­duc­er, direc­tor of the Sudan Film Fac­to­ry in Khar­toum, and of the Sudan Inde­pen­dent Film Fes­ti­val. Since 2009, Afifi has been help­ing to train a new gen­er­a­tion of Sudanese film­mak­ers. Mod­er­a­tion: Carsten Stark.

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It is only recent­ly that the con­flict in Sudan has begun to attract more atten­tion in the inter­na­tion­al press. In fact, the war between Gen­er­al Abdel-Fattah Burhan of the Sudanese Armed Forces SAF and Gen­er­al Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, head of the para­mil­i­tary Rapid Reac­tion Force RSF, is already enter­ing its third year - with dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for the pop­u­la­tion: accord­ing to the UN, 13 mil­lion people, around a quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion, have been dis­placed and are flee­ing through­out the region, while 25 mil­lion are suf­fer­ing from acute hunger. It is esti­mat­ed that between 60,000 and 150,000 people have died as a direct result of vio­lence, hunger, and disease.

Under the title Sudan, Remem­ber Us, we aim to draw atten­tion to this almost for­got­ten - some say ignored - con­flict, which began with the removal of long-time ruler Al-Bashir in April 2019. The people’s demand for the estab­lish­ment of a civil­ian gov­ern­ment remains unful­filled to this day. By show­ing two films lead­ing up to the fes­ti­val (see below) and two doc­u­men­taries in the main pro­gram, we aim to take a closer look at the impact of this war on the Sudanese population.

In her doc­u­men­tary SUDAN, REMEMBER US, film­mak­er Hind Meddeb looks back at the brief eupho­ria of the rev­o­lu­tion five years ago; her images become part of the protest move­ment that gripped the coun­try in 2019. The second film, KHARTOUM - a col­lab­o­ra­tive work by four Sudanese film­mak­ers shot in 2022 - fol­lows the lives of var­i­ous pro­tag­o­nists and traces their paths into exile in East Africa.

Films in the cinema pro­gram of the pre­vi­ous week: 

Sun. 18 May 19:30h: FORGOTTEN VOICES
Guests: two mem­bers of Bana Group for Peace and Devel­op­ment, mod­er­a­tor: Pia Göser
Sun. 25 May 19:30h: WE WERE REBELS, Ger­many 2014, 84 min.
Direc­tor: Katha­ri­na von Schröder, Flo­ri­an Schewe, guest via video: Katha­ri­na von Schröder