Proud Sudan Filmmakers Bring Message of War and Hope to Sundance

Timeea Mohamed Ahmed, Phil Cox, Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, Anas Saeed and Rawia Alhag attend the "Khartoum" Premiere during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theater on January 27, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (Getty Images/AFP)
Timeea Mohamed Ahmed, Phil Cox, Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, Anas Saeed and Rawia Alhag attend the "Khartoum" Premiere during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theater on January 27, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (Getty Images/AFP)
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Proud Sudan Filmmakers Bring Message of War and Hope to Sundance

Timeea Mohamed Ahmed, Phil Cox, Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, Anas Saeed and Rawia Alhag attend the "Khartoum" Premiere during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theater on January 27, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (Getty Images/AFP)
Timeea Mohamed Ahmed, Phil Cox, Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, Anas Saeed and Rawia Alhag attend the "Khartoum" Premiere during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theater on January 27, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (Getty Images/AFP)

Their country's war rarely tops global news bulletins, and Sudan has never had a film at Sundance before.

So the makers of documentary "Khartoum" carried their national flag with pride and a sense of deep responsibility to their premiere at the influential US movie festival on Monday.

"The film is acting as an ambassador," said Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, co-director of the movie, which portrays five ordinary people from Sudan's capital, all forced to flee the violence.

"On a national level, everyone's looking up at us now and telling us, 'You guys should push forward to let the world know what's happening in Sudan,'" he told AFP before the premiere.

"Not begging, or in a pathetic way, but in a way that says 'Hey, hey, world, we're here.'"

For nearly two years, Sudan has been engulfed in a brutal war between its army chief and the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The conflict has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people, uprooted more than 12 million and pushed many Sudanese to the brink of famine.

The film project kicked off in late 2022, originally intended to be a "cinematic poem" of everyday life in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, filmed on location with donated iPhones.

Although a brief period of civilian rule had just been swiftly thwarted by military leaders, the filmmakers initially recorded their subjects in relative calm, following a civil servant, a tea vendor, a pro-democracy "resistance volunteer" and two young boys.

Civil servant Majdi tended to his racing pigeons. Mischievous young best friends Lokain and Wilson sifted through trash to raise money to buy beautiful shirts from the market.

"We were just this close to finishing the film -- the last 20 percent -- but then war broke out," recalled Ahmad.

Amid the chaos, "at some point we lost contact with the characters," but the filmmakers were able to locate their subjects and help them flee abroad.

Once safely outside the country, the entire film team met up for a workshop to decide whether -- and how -- to continue.

They settled on an experimental format, in which the five subjects narrated their experiences of the onset of war in front of a green screen, which would later be filled with images matching their accounts.

"Animation, interviews, dreamscape sequences, reenactments -- all of that into one big mix, which is 'Khartoum,'" said Ahmad.

Ahmad and his co-directors hope that by bringing international attention to the war, they can indirectly reach or influence those deciding on policies.

"Look at this room. There's at least 200 people. Now everyone knows the word Khartoum," Ahmad told AFP at a Sundance event.

"Let's say only one or two percent of them will look up, 'what's Khartoum, what's Sudan, what's happening?' They will spark a conversation."

Perhaps the film's most poignant moments come from young Lokain and Wilson, who laugh about how they think the warring adults are "stupid," and busy themselves with daydreams of riding a magical lion around Khartoum.

During one interview, the smiles suddenly disappear, as they describe the arrival of an RSF assault.

"There was one guy who had no head. Another, whose face was burned. Another, his body in pieces," they recall.

Ahmad, who has a background in journalism, said he hopes the film can prove more effective than his previous news work, which had come to feel "like it's a dead end" in reaching global audiences.

If it can prompt "just a simple discussion with your friend about Sudan, what's happening -- it's more than enough," he said.



Death of South Korean Actor at 24 Sparks Discussion About Social Media and Internet Culture 

South Korean actor Kim Sae-ron arrives at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 5, 2023. (Yonhap via AP)
South Korean actor Kim Sae-ron arrives at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 5, 2023. (Yonhap via AP)
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Death of South Korean Actor at 24 Sparks Discussion About Social Media and Internet Culture 

South Korean actor Kim Sae-ron arrives at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 5, 2023. (Yonhap via AP)
South Korean actor Kim Sae-ron arrives at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 5, 2023. (Yonhap via AP)

South Korean actor Kim Sae-ron’s death this week has triggered an outpouring of grief and calls for changes to the way the country’s celebrities are treated in the public arena and on social media, which critics say can foster a culture of harassment.

The 24-year-old, who began her career as a child actor and earned acclaim for her roles in several domestic films, including the 2010 crime noir “The Man from Nowhere,” was found dead by a friend at her home in the country’s capital, Seoul, on Sunday. The National Police Agency has said that officers are not suspecting foul play and that Kim left no note.

Once among the brightest stars on South Korea’s vibrant movie and television scene, Kim struggled to find work after a 2022 drunk driving incident, for which she was later fined in court.

Online posts in South Korea are notoriously harsh toward celebrities who make missteps, especially women, and Kim faced constant negative coverage from news organizations that capitalized on public sentiment.

Newspapers and websites criticized her whenever she was seen partying with friends, or when she complained about her lack of work and nasty comments on social media. She was even criticized for smiling while filming an independent movie last year.

Following Kim’s death, several of the country’s major newspapers on Tuesday published editorials and opinion pieces lambasting the toxic online comments about the actor. Some invoked the 2019 deaths of K-Pop singers Seol-li and Goo Hara and the 2023 death of “Squid Games” actor Lee Sun-kyun while calling for a change in the “harsh, zero-tolerance” culture toward celebrities.

The Hankook Ilbo newspaper said the country's media outlets were part of the problem, lamenting that some outlets continued to exploit Kim for clicks even after her death, using provocative headlines that highlighted her past struggles.

The watchdog Citizens’ Coalition for Democratic Media on Tuesday criticized news organizations for blaming social media without considering their own “sensational and provocative reporting.”

Born in 2000, Kim began her acting career at age 9, with the 2009 film “A Brand New Life,” portraying a girl’s struggles to adjust to a new life after being left at an orphanage by her father. She rose to stardom with “The Man from Nowhere,” which was one of the biggest hits in the South Korean movie scene that year and won her a domestic acting award.

She starred in various movies and TV shows before the 2022 drunk driving incident.

Gold Medalist, Kim's former management agency, did not immediately answer calls for comment.