Khartoum (2025): Sudanese filmmakers turn war into intimate portraits

By Sara Bass for Radio Dabanga

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Drawing from footage shot in Sudan and Nairobi since 2022, four Sudanese filmmakers use unconventional, experimental methods to inject whimsy into a devastating reality. Khartoum (2025) presents vignettes of five people finding a way forward after war breaks out on April 15, 2023, irrevocably upending the lives they know. The film weaves together themes of classism, racism, and the war’s ever-present threat of erasing hope for the future.

Rawia Alhag and Ibrahim “Snoopy” Ahmad were among the filmmakers selected by Sudan Film Factory and Native Voice Films following an open call for short cinematic stories about daily life in Sudan. Alhag’s pitch centred on two best friends, Wilson and Lokain, whom she noticed during morning runs through Jabarona, just outside Omdurman. The 11 and 12-year-old boys lived on the streets and collected plastic bottles for a meagre profit.

Snoopy’s story followed Majdi, a civil servant who questioned his integrity working for a military-led government and harboured a passion for racing pigeons. In collaboration with Timeea Mohamed Ahmed and Anas Saeed—who pitched separate stories—and with the creative direction of Philip Cox, they began work on the ground later that year.

The outbreak of war in the first months of filming forced the team to reconceive what had seemed a straightforward project. They remained committed to telling the characters’ daily lives. Though, how the team would incorporate war as an additional element in the film, especially without the original backdrop in Sudan, wasn’t clear. 

“We had to make sure that someone actually tells the story of the people on the ground,” said Snoopy, describing these personal stories as the gap in media coverage. “The majority of the news was the bombing, the areas that the [paramilitary Rapid Support Forces] (RSF) was taking over, but not like a personal perspective – what people were going through – how they were eating, how they were getting money, how they were surviving in these war zones, how they were dealing with the RSF personally, and what made them decide to leave.” The whole crew intended for the characters to resonate with others enduring the war.

Each member of the team evacuated at varying stages of the conflict and reached Nairobi by the end of 2023, where the project became more experimental. With Khartoum inaccessible, a green screen became their substitute landscape; the directors then experimented with methods to draw out their characters’ stories. Rawia took the boys to the park before asking them to reflect on anything difficult. Snoopy took Majdi to smoke shisha.

By combining interviews, reenactments of good and difficult memories, animation, and candid dialogue, the final production makes the characters’ dreams the most salient thing. Khartoum is additionally impactful for how it exposes racism and classism both in the production process and on screen. According to Snoopy, the film tries to collapse these structures.

“There’s this under layer of racism in Sudan. You can see it clearly in Majdi and Khadmallah. Majdi – lighter-skinned, upper-class guy who works for the government – and Khadmallah who’s a college graduate – she couldn’t find a job and ended up as a tea vendor,” said Snoopy.

Even the characters held preconceptions about each other at the outset of filming because their different backgrounds did not facilitate interaction in public. The five characters are Wilson, Lokain, and Majdi—introduced above—as well as Khadmallah and Jawad. Khadmallah is a tea vendor from the Nuba Mountains with a strong intellect for maths. Jawad is a resistance committee volunteer with an affinity for his motorcycle and outspoken about seeking purpose.

The directors intended for everyone to be on the same plane of power and respect. They lived and cooked together and built mutual trust. Then, in the scenes on camera, each character called on the others to recreate pivotal memories or depict their hopes for the future. Back in Khartoum, these people probably would have had no reason to challenge inbuilt preconceptions about one another; but here on set, they momentarily become as close as father and son or boyfriend and girlfriend despite where any of them started.

During our interview, Snoopy paused on his favourite moment in the film, when Wilson and Lokain pass an older man a bottle. He said it subtly acknowledges the recurring cycle of bottle collecting. The classism inherent in this scene, as well as the racism in others, are aspects “the general audience doesn’t see clearly, that’s why we were always trying to push this,” he said. Alhag added that the military dictatorship under former President Omar al-Bashir sought to Arabise and Islamise parts of the Sudanese population, atrocities for which the International Criminal Court issued warrants for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. That campaign of mass violence fed into the civilian-led 2019 revolution and al-Bashir’s deposition.

The moment that stayed with Alhag was one off screen, an incident that occurred while filming the young boys at a market in Omdurman. It was the second time a group of people passing the set got angry that the directors were representing Sudan with darker-skinned bodies and street kids thought of as dirty, uneducated, parentless, and generally disrespected. “People thought we shouldn’t film this because Sudan is supposed to be the clean places, the lighter-skinned people. Lokain, Wilson, and even Khadmallah – they don’t represent that.”

Framing the film are the reflections and dreams of the characters. It starts with Khadmallah introducing herself: “from a place where the earth and the trees sing. I’m a Sudanese woman who dreams without fear.” Wilson and Lokain fixated on a lion: “a lion that roams Khartoum, and we’re on its back. We’re going to tell you how we found the treasure during the war.” Majdi wavered on an idea of himself as either a coward or a brave man. Jawad spoke his fear of being without a home. “I want to be known, to have purpose, to be someone who is loved,” he said. By the end of the film, each character had the chance to play out their aspirations—with the aid of the green screen—through a magical tree growing in the Nuba Mountains, an oversized pigeon soaring over Khartoum, a fierce lion that outpaces the surrounding violence, and a motorcycle that yearns solely for Hollywood.

The war was a catalyst for these characters’ lives changing, said Snoopy, but their humanity is rooted in their laughter, what they like to eat, how they like to spend their days, and their dreams. These things are unrelated to the violence they endure. The film was an effort to reflect these people back to themselves, to relish the treasure in the midst of war.

Khartoum debuted at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival in January, then screened at Berlinale in February 2025 and the BFI London Film Festival in October. It has since been shown at various international film festivals and human rights events around the world. Khartoum is available to stream on BBC Storyville. Its directors are awaiting the day it can be screened in Sudan. Read more about the film, and follow its East Africa tour on their website.