Sudan, Remem­ber Us review – extreme­ly pow­er­ful stuff

There’s a kind­ness in the abil­i­ty to for­get. I myself con­stant­ly try and not remem­ber the child­hood streets I walked down a child in Khar­toum, of eat­ing fatoor at my grandmother’s home and of the hope that erupt­ed on the back of rev­o­lu­tion in Sudan in 2019. The place and its peo­ple now live in dis­ar­ray, among the cru­el rem­nants of a pur­pose­less war. The opti­mism of that era feels ludi­crous in ret­ro­spect so bet­ter to try and for­get the things you once held dearest.

Yet that, of course is a priv­i­leged posi­tion, as unlike I, so much of the Sudanese dias­po­ra could not speak of the hor­rors enact­ed by the geno­ci­dal mili­tia leader known as Hemedti, and so work like this doc­u­men­tary from Hind Med­deb impress­es upon us all to remem­ber. There’s a qui­et moment in Sudan, Remem­ber Us where a young activist paints over a crum­bling wall not far from my child­hood home, her brush mov­ing with a delib­er­ate­ness that makes time stretch. It’s not just paint; it’s insis­tence, even if that wall like­ly has been now reduced to a pile of rub­ble. Meddeb’s doc­u­men­tary is full of such moments, of ges­tures weighed down by a his­to­ry of vio­lence, but simul­ta­ne­ous­ly buoyed by a hope that refus­es to die.

Fol­low­ing the eupho­ria of the rev­o­lu­tion, when Omar al-Bashir was oust­ed after three decades of author­i­tar­i­an rule, Med­deb traces the fall­out through the eyes of those who tru­ly believed that some­thing new might emerge from the blood strewn ash­es. What makes this film extra­or­di­nary is its refusal to roman­ti­cise that belief. Instead, it sits with the dis­il­lu­sion­ment, the jus­ti­fied fear and the impos­si­ble resilience of young Sudanese artists and activists whose lives become qui­et tes­ta­ments to the rev­o­lu­tion­ary poten­tial that was squandered.

Med­deb, a French-Tunisian jour­nal­ist, employs a gonzo blend of hand­held cam­er­a­work and ver­ti­cal smart­phone videos, and the film steps beyond the for­mal­i­ties of tra­di­tion­al film­mak­ing, just as a gen­er­a­tion of Sudanese activists have broad­ened their hori­zons. If there’s a fault here, it’s not in the film’s ambi­tion, but in its scope. Few peo­ple are aware of the hard­ships Sudan has endured over the past few decades, and the film doesn’t aim to edu­cate them with an over­abun­dance of con­text. Instead Med­deb com­mits to speak­ing direct­ly to and with those who lived it. The result is some­thing more inti­mate, more painful: a film that mourns the loss of col­lec­tive inno­cence; laments the naivety of hope; but also insists on record­ing the brav­ery of bear­ing witness.

There is no false uplift here. No clos­ing text promis­ing a brighter future around the cor­ner. Sudan, Remem­ber Us ends with a silence that echoes across a cru­el void of indif­fer­ence. The title is less an appeal to the West than a mes­sage to the Sudanese dias­po­ra who would rather com­part­men­talise, and to the dis­ap­peared and dis­placed, to those still fight­ing. It’s not an easy watch, and nor should it be. But in giv­ing space to those who can­not and should not be erased, Sudan, Remem­ber Us becomes not just a doc­u­men­tary. It is an act of resis­tance in itself.