‘Sudan, Remember Us’ Receives Audience Award at Ajyal Film Festival 2024

‘Sudan, Remember Us’, a powerful documentary, which captures a jubilant moment of defiance among young Sudanese activists after the overthrow of a long dictatorship, and then chronicles the military crackdown that followed, by French-Tunisian journalist Hind Meddeb received the Ajyal Audience Award at the Ajyal Film Festival 2024, Qatar’s much-anticipated annual gathering of global cinema, creativity, and cultural storytelling.

This was announced at the award ceremony of Ajyal Film Festival 2024 on 23 November 2024. The star-studded film festival, which took place 16 to 23 November 2024 in Katara Cultural Village in Qatar, opened with ‘Sudan, Remember Us’ with performances by activist and poet Shajan Suliman, a key protagonist in the documentary, and Sudanese-Canadian poet and singer Mustafa the Poet.

This year’s Ajyal saw the attendance of many well-known Sudanese personalities and creatives including YouTuber Maha Jaafar, political cartoonist Khalid Albaih, and Sudanese filmmaker Amjad Al Nour.

‘Sudan, Remember Us’ is supported by Doha Film Institute (DFI), Qatar’s first international organisation dedicated to film financing, production, education and the film festivals, including Ajyal. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year, and aptly conveys the power of dreams, hope and creativity to challenge oppressive forces.

The inspiring documentary delves deep into the untold stories of Sudan, bringing forward young voices of resilience, dignity, and hope in the face of turmoil, and highlights the strength of the Sudanese people in their struggle for peace and unity. Shajane, Maha, Muzamil, Rufaida, Khattab are Sudanese in their 20s, politically active and artistically creative. This film is a cinematic chorus, the collective portrait of a generation fighting for freedom with their words, poems and chants. Faced with a corrupted army responsible for war crimes in Darfur, Kordofan and Blue Nile, they could have lost heart before starting. Without the dream guiding them, the power of imagination and the might of poetic discourse, they would not have overthrown the former regime. I’ve been following them since I met them at the revolutionary sit-in that lasted 57 days around the Army headquarters in Khartoum. After they survived the 3 June 2019 massacre—when the army attacked the sit-in, killing hundreds of people in a few hours, while resisting the military coup of October 2021, until the war started, causing death and destruction everywhere, forcing everyone to take the roads of exile.

In addition to ‘Sudan, Remember Us’, between 2011 and 2013, Meddeb directed ‘Tunisia Clash’ and ‘Electro Chaabi’, two feature documentaries on musical creation as a revolutionary act. Her previous film, ‘Paris Stalingrad’ was selected in numerous festivals like Cinéma du Réel, TIFF, PSIFF, CPH:DOX, received two awards at the Documentary Edge Festival NZ and was theatrically released in France in May 2021.

For more information, visit dohafilminstitute.com/financing/projects/grants/sudan-remember-us

Related posts