Khartoum (2025): The story of a city that will never be the same again

Interview by Abbas Muhammad Abbas for Radio Dabanga

The film Khartoum (2025) is not just a documentary about a city, but a persistent attempt to capture a spirit that walked the streets, sat on the sidewalks, drank tea in the morning, and dreamed despite everything. The film, which was shot before the outbreak of the mid-April war, follows the lives of five characters from different social and educational backgrounds. It was shown at several international festivals, traveling from the USA to Europe, and finally to Doha, where it had its first screening in the Arab world.

At the heart of this work stands Sudanese film maker Rawia Alhag, one of the directors, alongside Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, Timeea Mohamed Ahmed, Philip Cox, and Anas Saeed.

She believes that Khartoum was not merely a documentary, but an attempt to tell the truth. In an interview with Radio Dabanga, Alhag says that the city is recovering, but it will never be the same again. As she puts it, Sudanese people “carry within them the memory of a city,” but memory alone cannot bring back the streets or the friends as they once were.

She explains that for them as filmmakers, the film was a voice for the Sudanese to the world, a message saying that what is happening inside is not a civil war in the traditional sense, but a conflict driven by external parties with multiple agendas, while the Sudanese citizen remains the biggest loser.

Our guest doesn’t separate the film’s content from the reality in which it was made. She points out that the challenges facing the Sudanese film industry existed even before the war, especially regarding filming in public spaces. She says: “Getting to the real scene, capturing people’s natural reactions in the street, was extremely difficult, even with permits.”

Alhag reminisces about her artistic beginnings back to her university days, when she became involved in student theater before transitioning to cinema. Regarding her role as a female director, Alhag believes the primary challenge stems not so much from gender but rather from the structure of the film industry itself. She maintains that fundamental challenges—such as funding, filming, locations, and legal hurdles—are faced by both men and women within the film community. However, she acknowledges the existence of additional social constraints that may specifically affect female directors, particularly those related to family and societal perceptions.

After leaving Sudan, Alhag continued to work in cinema as an act of resistance, through her short film “Off the Record,” which tells a Sudanese love story in exile. The film follows a young Sudanese couple who decide to marry, but the circumstances of their refugee status impose a different reality on them. They hold an “online” wedding, a virtual celebration where they share their joy with their families inside and outside Sudan.

Alhag says the film was an attempt to tell the story of refugees, the suffering of Sudanese people inside the country, and to depict the harsh transformations that war has imposed on the simplest aspects of life.

Despite the war and exile, Alhag doesn’t hide her optimism about the future of Sudanese cinema. She believes that recent years have witnessed the rise of a new generation of young directors who bring bold stories and are shedding light on Sudanese homes and streets, after years of being shrouded in darkness in the eyes of the world. She attributes this transformation to the impact of the December Revolution, which broke the silence and expanded the space for storytelling.

Alhag concludes her interview with Radio Dabanga with a seemingly simple dream: that Sudanese filmmakers will connect, exchange experiences, and have a unified body to represent them. She dreams of a day when a red carpet is rolled out in Sudan, and film festivals are held, hosting artists from around the world.