Sudanese Film Group

Formalized in 1989 to foster a new wave of Sudanese filmmaking free from censorship, the Sudanese Film Group sought to create a distinctly homegrown cinema that reflected the experiences of ordinary people and challenged entrenched systems of power in a country shaped by decades of colonialism, civil war, and political instability. Formally radical and thematically incisive, these short films by founding members Eltayeb Mahdi, Ibrahim Shaddad, and Suliman Mohamed Ibrahim Elnour employ a cinematic grammar all their own to confront issues of economic exploitation, imperialism, the abuse of power, and postcolonial disillusionment. Though the group’s ambitions were soon thwarted by the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, the films they left behind are a powerful assertion of creative independence and cinema as a form of political resistance—a legacy explored in the revelatory documentary TALKING ABOUT TREES, also featured here.

All films except AFRICA, THE JUNGLE, DRUMS AND REVOLUTION and TALKING ABOUT TREES were digitally restored by Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V.