“How do you show a city? How do you capture a huge metropolis like Khartoum, New York, when you only have these small cameras?” said Phil Cox, a British journalist filmmaker and one of the directors on the documentary project, “Khartoum.”
That was the driving question when he and four other filmmakers set out to make a documentary about the city in Sudan. Originally, the goal was to make a series of cinematic poems that would capture residents in Khartoum. Cox and the Sudan Film Factory put a plan together for the project, got some funding from Apple, and each filmmaker found participants in the city to follow their stories.
Anas Saeed was filming Khadmalla, a mother and tea lady; Rawia Alhag followed Lokain and Wilson, two young bottle collectors; Ibrahim Snoopy filmed Majdi, a father who races pigeons; and Timeea M. Ahmed shadowed Jawad, a bachelor who volunteers in the resistance committee.
“Everything was going well, then the war broke out. Complete chaos ensued, and the production dropped everything and helped everyone get out,” Cox said. This was in April 2023, and the filmmakers didn’t know if they would continue their project, having lost contact with their participants in the fighting.
While there were more directors on the original project, these four decided they wanted to stick with the project, adapting the narrative to reflect the harsh experiences each participant faced.
“We came up with the idea of reaching out by any means and then try to pull them out of the danger zones and bring them to Kenya, where it’s safe, a little bit more calm, detox them a little bit from war, and try to heal them a little bit, and then try to continue the film,” Snoopy said.
Having been separated from their participants for over six months, the directors spent time brainstorming how to continue the project without live footage of their experiences in the war zone.
“In the beginning, we just wanted to experiment with everything, trying different ideas, because this sudden change impacted all of us, and we didn’t have a clear vision,” Snoopy said. “So we use some of the old shots with the participants, and then we use some interviews, and also we use some green screen and then reenactment.”
It’s far from a fly-on-the-wall style documentary, said Cox.
“We don’t adhere to the idea that you don’t have control in documentary, in the sense (that) in this one, everyone participated with the participant,” Cox said. “It was so important in this film that the directors worked together with the subjects, deciding what was best or deciding how to do it. So in this film, there is control, but it’s kind of participatory control with the participants. So they decided, as much as the directors, what would be filmed or not.”
Reenactment using green screen was one way for the directors to be surprised by the events and retellings of the participants, Snoopy said.
“We wanted to be as the audience, we didn’t know anything happening. So we could be surprised by that scene,” he said.
This added authenticity to the filming but was an added layer of complexity since these weren’t actors, just regular people.
“We were, yes, creating an environment of control, but then you can only do it once. They’re not actors,” said Cox. “It was such a delicate balance of controlling, but not controlling, creating an environment, but not forcing. And honestly, when I worked with the team, I was full of confidence, but actually we had no idea if it was going to work.”
This philosophy was true even in the original filming, said Saeed, where the directors would at times create situations that would be relevant to the story they were trying to tell. In one scene, a group of Sudanese people sit at Khadmalla’s tea cart and discuss their opinions on the political state of Sudan.
“Some of the things weren’t controlled, but a little bit adjusted,” Saeed said. “Like the protests weren’t controlled, obviously, everyone was just protesting. You can’t really manage that well. But the conversation at the tea lady (cart), I sparked the initial conversation and just let it snowball into one big, relevant discussion. So, I ignited it.”
The directors said through the process of filming, they became like a family with the participants, living together in an apartment in Kenya, learning their hopes and dreams and sharing heavy moments and tears.
This rich, complex emotion of the Sudanese people is meant to transmit to the audience in the final film, said Ahmed.
“It’s real people, stories that represent, I might say, millions and millions of Sudanese people, that you can feel through them and through their stories the whole Sudanese cause that’s happening now, the whole conflict that is displacing millions of people,” he said. “And it’s not just a thing to feel, ‘Oh, that’s another sad story from Africa.’ They were also happy in the film. They were also dancing within the film. They were also singing within the film.”
Premiering “Khartoum” at Sundance in the World Cinema Documentary Competition is more than just to reach Hollywood, Ahmed said.
“Sundance is in America, and America is one of the most influential countries in the world regarding governments. So we don’t want to just show this film to other filmmakers or to other creatives, we want to show this film to an international audience that can make a difference and that can speak up about Sudan, for Sudan, donate, think or even feel anything towards Sudan,” he said.
The situation in Sudan is considered the biggest humanitarian crisis in history, displacing over 15 million people, said Snoopy, and there’s been virtually no media coverage.
“This is the perfect opportunity to let the whole world know what’s happening right now in Sudan,” he said. It’s good to always have that conversation. … Hopefully, we don’t know when, but some decision makers will hear about the film and then automatically help in the Sudanese cause.”
‘Khartoum’ in-person screening
- 2:45 p.m., Jan. 27, Egyptian Theatre
- 8:50 p.m., Jan. 28, Megaplex Redstone 3
- 2:45 p.m., Jan. 29, Broadway Centre Cinemas 3, Salt Lake City
- 12:15 p.m., Jan. 31, Holiday Village Cinemas 1
Online
- 8 a.m., Jan. 30 through 11:55 p.m., Feb. 2