Some of the groundwork of Hind Meddeb’s new documentary, Sudan, Remember Us, was laid in the mid-2010s, when the French-Moroccan-Tunisian journalist and filmmaker was regularly visiting and offering support to makeshift, frequently police-harassed refugee camps in the streets of Paris. The places its denizens came from were widespread — many hailed from the likes of Somalia and Afghanistan — but the bulk were from Sudan. Arabic-fluent Meddeb assisted with several people’s asylum applications, an experience that proved inspirational to a 2019 documentary, Paris Stalingrad, she co-directed with Thim Naccache that captured the testimony of refugees trying to get by in the eponymous district. 

Its narrative beginning around the time of the country’s 2018-19 revolution, Sudan, Remember Us was partly prompted by some Sudanese refugees Meddeb befriended in Paris who wanted to take part in the uprisings but were understandably apprehensive about returning to a country from which they’d departed under dangerous circumstances. Meddeb, who essentially went in their place in Khartoum in order to show them what she saw, doesn’t try to distance herself from the narrative. She leaves in, for instance, her subjects referring to her by name, whether they’re communicating in person or in letters heard in voiceover. But the film takes more time spotlighting impassioned young people determined to effect national change, determined to remain in their long-politically-tumultuous country to see through a citizen-run democracy. “I won’t go home,” chant some protestors shortly after Sudan, Remember Us opens. “I want my rights.”

Meddeb tempers the infectious optimism of her earlier footage by, at the start of the film, noting the subsequent start of a deadly civil war in the country. It began in the spring of 2023, continues to go infuriatingly undercovered in the media, and has led the majority of Sudan, Remember Us’ subjects to seek safety in other countries. But that the movie’s narrative doesn’t conclude where one would hope doesn’t depreciate the gravity of what comes before it or the courage of the people whose testimonies it gathers. 

Fighting for one’s and one’s neighbor’s rights is a continuous struggle; one woman notes that, even if Sudan reaches the political outcome the resistance efforts she’s part of demand, she won’t hesitate to zero in on where it falls short. The fervor and resilience of the film’s subjects function, too, as a collective call not to remain complacent when one’s government impinges on basic freedoms. Some citizens tell Meddeb that when they go out into the streets to broadcast their opposition, they’re undeterred by the uncertainty around whether they’ll be arrested or killed. “Bullets don’t kill,” we’ll hear one man remark. “Silence does.” In her director’s statement, Meddeb characterizes herself as a translator, impelled by the conviction that words are stronger than weapons. In Sudan, Remember Us, Meddeb amplifies the work of people working tirelessly to preserve, as she puts it, the “beauty in a country scarred by years of dictatorship and a military oppression.”

Photo credit: Courtesy of MPI Media