‘It became totally collaborative’

Khartoum directors talk about the shifting shape of their documentary in the face of war

by Amber Wilkinson

Snoopy, Rawia, Timeea and Anas
Snoopy, Rawia, Timeea and Anas Photo: Native Voice Films

Hybrid documentary Khartoum follows five people from the Sudanese capital - tea seller Khadmallah, two young boys, Lokain and Wilson, activist Jawad and a civil servant Majdi - who were forced to flee the country. Sudanese directors Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad and Timeea Mohamed Ahmed - working with British director Phil Cox - were also forced to flee along with the people they were following. Rather than halt the project, the team decided to continue, gathering the participants together and making inventive use of green screen to help them talk about their experiences as well as to consider their hopes for the future. We caught up with the team ahead of the film’s world premiere at Sundance and began by asking Phil to talk about the origins of the documentary.

“I was working um in Khartoum, in 2021, making another film, The Spider-Man of Sudan. I came across this space called the Sudan Film Factory. And meeting other emerging Sudanese filmmakers it was quite clear that there was a group at this time of young Sudanese filmmakers that had will, ambition, vision and talent but no resources.

“So being a white, kind of a slightly more privileged person with access to other entities, we approached some cultural funding. Apple donated some iPhones and the original project was a cinematic poem of Khartoum at this revolutionary moment.

“During the revolution, there was an explosion of energy and cooperation and collaboration vision, and I was learning things in Sudan. It was a really exciting time.”

Speaking about how they chose the citizens to follow, Ahmad says: “At the beginning there was a workshop and we were brainstorming the ideas of how we would select the participants and the emotional journey of each character. So each one of us went off and selected our characters according to their position in society. Each character has a different layer. So we followed their journeys in Khartoum but then as soon as war started it had a huge impact on our stories, so we had to reshift the narrative.

“We came to Nairobi and had an extensive workshop about how to continue the film because at some point, we lost contact with the characters because they were in areas that had no type of connection. We brainstormed and figured out how to creatively continue to make this film.”

Lokain and Wilson in Khartoum
Lokain and Wilson in Khartoum Photo: Native Voice Films

“I guess that we lost touch with them for around five to eight months. And then each one of us try to reach out to the people who are the closest to each character so that we could try to evacuate them or find the solution to put them into safer places because, at the end of the day, they're not not just you know, participants in our in the movie, we all became family and it's good to always take care of each other. So that's when we decided, okay, let's just bring them here to Nairobi first, to keep them safe and to heal them because they went through a lot and then it's not really a good thing to immediately talk about what you've been through, because it will, you know, bring the trauma back. So we all went on a journey of healing and making them feel comfortable and at ease and then we started to film.”

Alhag adds that in the case of the two children, they had to send someone physically to the area where they believed they were in order to find them.

Cox adds: “Our priorities changed. We dropped the first film and we put all our resources and financing into just bringing people out, including the team and resettling them. And, on their arrival, we did engage an Arabic-speaking trauma counsellor and just let the team have some weeks chatting, being, with nothing about the filming. So that was the priority. Then it was also do we continue or not? And that wasn’t my decision.

“Everybody was now sharing one space so this is also really important for this film. The people that you see in the film and the filmmakers never normally meet in Sudan. They're from different social classes, ethnicities. Majdi, the bureaucrat, would never touch or speak to those two boys. But suddenly they were all together and I think it became apparent having lost everything, houses, memories, people, that making the film was a positive act was an act of resistance. Was a statement. And that came from the filmmakers. So then how do we deal with the delicate issues? So, that's when I said to the filmmakers, ‘If we're to ask the participants to reconstruct or do something, you have to do it too.’

“So we had workshops where first of all the filmmakers reenacted things that happened to them and the participants watched. Then bit by bit, it became totally collaborative. The participants would say, ‘Add that’, ‘Do that’ or ‘I want to say this’. So each director worked with their subjects. ‘What do you want to do or not do? This is your decision. We can stop or start. It's a safe space’. So that's how this all began.”

The situation was so unusual, with the participants all experiencing upheaval that they decided that they would film everything. “Meta on meta on meta,” as Cox puts it.

He adds: “We didn't know if it would work but we realised there was emotion behind the camera and in front. Our idea was how many layers can we film in this and then we’ll sort it out in the edit.

“Every one of the directors had also lost all their possessions, lost their houses, lost family, so they had to be part of this.”

Saeed adds: “I felt like I wasn’t documenting only his character’s story, but all of our stories, every Sudanese person that went through war.”

The multifaceted nature comes across strongly in the film, with the kaleidoscopic nature of the stories being told represented in the backgrounds against which we sometimes see them speak.

Khartoum
Khartoum Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Alhag stresses the importance of collaboration right through the process, not just during filming but also in post-production.

“That reflected us as a family,” she says. “We kept supporting each other up to today.”

Cox singles out the work of editor Palestinian Irish editor Yousef Joubeh as being crucial to the final film.

“He had the bridge between Arabic and English, the team and me. He wasn't just an editor, he really became part of the family and that allowed us to push forward in London, send notes to the team, they contributed, they talked to the characters to make sure they knew what was happening, so it was participatory. It’s the kind of thing that I would say, ‘Don't ever do this’, but because there was a bigger picture of a war where people were dying, nobody going into anything petty because there was a bigger thing going on. So we never got into fights or battles, which would be normally expected with a group of strong artists”

Explaining some of the specific footage shot by the various directors, he notes that the revolutionary “moments on the street” were mostly filmed by Saeed “who always runs the wrong way - not away but the other way”. He says the director used to run a fake taxi in Khartoum, so that he could get to the front, then jump out and film.

He adds: “Rawia has a consummate ability with writing and narrative and working with the children. I don't think any other of us could achieve that. To reach that level of intimacy and dreams and play, it’s a real credit.

“And Snoopy is kind of our lead cinematographer. He ran the studio and the green screen.”

Ahmed’s skill was in “bridging and keeping all the group together”.

Cox says: “They're all very humble, but, you know, there's a real skill set which exists in Sudan and doesn't have an outlet. This film gave it an outlet. So what they all do next is going to be exciting.”

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