Sudanese Documentary ‘Heroic Bodies’ Receives Audience Award at Malmo Arab Film Festival 2023

Heroic Bodies, a new Sudanese documentary film by Sudanese filmmaker Sara Suliman, received the Audience Award at the Malmö Arab Film Festival (MAFF) 2023.

MAFF is the leading and largest film festival dedicated to Arab cinema outside the Arab world. The 13th edition of MAFF took place from 28 April to 4 May 2023. This year, MAFF awarded the Egyptian star Hussein Fahmy with the Life Achievement Award.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sara Suliman (@alsarasuliman)

Heroic Bodies made its debut at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2022, one of the leading documentary festivals in the world. The feature documentary was selected in the Frontline section at IDFA 2022, which took place in Amsterdam, Netherlands from 9 to 20 November 2022. 

The documentary highlights the development of the Sudanese women’s movement within the framework of the body politics. It investigates how the human body was used as a means of resistance against the state, patriarchy and colonial oppression. This film demonstrates different events in which the body became a common refractor for various kinds of repression and resistance that occurred during the eras of British colonialism and post-independence. It will further examine how the body engaged in creative practices that contributed to the process of Sudanese women’s emancipation.

Heroic Bodies features some of Sudan’s most notable figures such as Hadia Talsam, member of the all-female Sudanese band, Al Balabil; Professor Balghis Badri, gender activist and the Director of the Regional Institute for Gender Diversity Peace and Rights at Ahfad University for Women; Fatma Algadal, women’s rights activist; Dr Ihsan Fagiri, founder of the No to Women’s Oppression initiative; Professor Fatima Babiker Mahmoud, founder of the Pan African Women’s Liberation Organisation (PAWLO); Kamal Ibrahim Ahmed, entrepreneur and businessman; and more.

The documentary was a result of Suliman’s dissertation, The Sudanese Women’s Movement: Body Politics and the Process of Emancipation, when she was pursuing a master’s degree in Gender Studies from SOAS University of London in 2017. She then began to develop the dissertation into film in 2018.

MAFF presents competition programmes for feature fiction, documentaries and short fiction. Since 2016, an Audience Award has been distributed for the best feature and documentary. The festival has been held since 2011, providing a platform for Arab cinema in Europe. The festival was created as a platform and a meeting place for Arab cinema in Malmö, Sweden and Europe. Founded by MAFF’s General Manager and Creative Director Mouhamad Keblawi, the festival started as a grassroots initiative and has since undergone a tremendous development, and is now the largest film festival in southern Sweden.

Related posts