Starting Aug. 8, ‘Sudan, Remember Us’ is playing in theaters across USA and Canada.

Very early in our interview, filmmaker Hind Meddeb tells me she is not a journalist anymore. Newsroom politics, the endless harping on “objectivity” and the reporting bias when writing about the Middle East, she said, has steered her away. Born to the poet Abdelwahab Meddeb and the linguist Amina Maya Khelladi, Meddeb grew up in France but spent her life travelling between Tunisia, Morocco, Syria and in places “on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea.”

Since walking away from journalism, she has been making films: About a punk-hip-hop hybrid music movement in Egypt, about civil resistance in Tunisia and about Sudanese refugees in Paris. I caught up with Meddeb shortly before she flew from Morocco to New York for the theatrical release of her latest film, “Sudan, Remember Us,” about the war tearing that country apart and the people . Our conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Truthdig: You are French with roots in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. What made you want to make a film about Sudan?

Hind Meddeb: I came to know about Sudan in Paris through my previous film, “Paris Stalingrad” [That film’s 18-year-old protagonist, Souleymane, was a refugee from Darfur]. And when I finished that film, the revolution started in Sudan. I have a lot of Sudanese friends among the refugees I was filming in Paris, and they pushed me to travel to Sudan, because they were very frustrated they couldn’t go. It was their dream since they were born to see this revolution happen and succeed. So, they said I have to go. They said, “We will help you. We’ll introduce you to our friends.” And so, in a way, I went to Sudan to bring back images of their revolution to the Sudanese friends I had in Paris. This film is a story of friendship.

TD: The voiceover in your film plays out like letters you write to your friends, and they write you back. What inspired that?

HM: Half of it are real voice messages that we were sending to each other while filming. That’s how we were communicating, because I don’t write Arabic very well. When I started to write the voiceover, I was writing in French, and I was giving a lot of information. But when I worked with the editor Gladys Joujou, the film rejected it. I believe that film is an organic living being. The French wasn’t working and I decided to write a kind of letter to the Sudanese people, and fit in the voice messages with this idea that this film is a love letter to Sudan; first to my friends in Sudan, and then to the whole country.

TD: Had you been to Sudan before 2019?

“You could see that the state was not taking care of the people.”

HM: It was my first time in Sudan. When I arrived in 2019 I was very afraid, because I had no idea what to expect. And then, when I arrived there, I saw people with heavy weapons everywhere, with these trucks, and it really looked like in the movies, “Black Hawk Down,” “Blood Diamond.” Traces of the war were on the walls and the country was kind of abandoned. You could see that the state was not taking care of the people. I was alone and very shy, but then I was really welcomed by the people and the sit-in was incredible. Like a kind of utopian city. I was thinking, “I’m gonna arrive, I’m gonna scout.” I didn’t have to because people really had stories to share and my camera was, to them, like a window to the world. I started to film. And that’s the first part of the film, me arriving in Sudan and being surrounded with these incredible people in this very special moment.

TD: How did you decide upon your characters?

HM: We had to cut a lot because we only told the story with the people who were there from the beginning to the end. I started a lot of stories with other characters that disappeared, who I couldn’t find again, who I couldn’t film again. The film was kind of a mess and there is some beautiful footage that is not in the film. I really tried, with Gladys [Joujou], to not repeat the same idea. We wanted something sharp and powerful. We could edit many more movies from the footage I have.

TD: Your father is a poet. Music has played a big role in your films. And Souleymane in “Paris Stalingrad” recites poetry. Here too, there’s so much poetry and songs of resistance. Do you seek out the art in these troubled cities?

HM:To be honest, the film is very spontaneous. When I was seeing and experiencing Sudan, poetry was everywhere all the time; people recited poetry as they breathed. It’s not a construction of the film or a choice I made. It was really there. 

TD: Are there people you wanted in the film, but couldn’t include?

HM: This revolution was really well organized but it was impossible to film the resistance committee for security reasons. They couldn’t take the risk to show how they organize. For example, if I got arrested, the footage would be taken by the military, and then it would have been dangerous for them. I was just filming what I could film. And this film is full of holes. It doesn’t tell the whole story. Every time I planned to shoot something, the situation at hand was ruining my plans. This film is a kind of miracle; just trying to make things with what you have, and it’s never what you planned, never what you wrote, never what you wanted to direct. 

TD: Did you set out to make a war film?

HM: It’s not a war report, because I’m not a war reporter, and I wanted to keep it very humble. I didn’t go to famous people, famous politicians or famous artists. I just wanted to keep it that way; the way I was traveling, meeting random ordinary citizens. I really wanted to tell their story and Sudan’s story through them. These people are extraordinary, but they’re not people on the frontlines. 

TD: My favorite part of the film is when a feminist revolution is seen as the answer to oppression. A young woman wearing a hijab says that it’s what her father believes in…

HM: As a kid, I was growing up between two worlds. I was born and raised in Paris, but every holiday I was going to my grandma in Morocco, the other grandma in Tunisia and my mom was living in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon. I was always very surprised at the way the people in France were seeing African people, Arab people, Muslim people, because it was so far from my own experience. And that’s the reason why I make films, because I really want to share my experience, which is really far from how our people are represented in this world. I’m trying with my movies so people can see these women, these spaces, these young people differently. Because in the media, mostly the Muslim people who are headlines are the terrorists. Everybody knows bin Laden, but who knows Alaa Salah? 

TD: From the famous photograph, “Woman in White” by Lana H. Haroun?

HM: She is this woman wearing a white cloth and standing on top of a car…singing, and nobody translated the poem. The poem goes, ‘They burn us in the name of religion. Kill us in the name of religion. They jail us in the name of religion. But religion has nothing to do with that. Religion says you have to fight the tyrant and you have to fight for freedom.’ And this is so beautiful. It’s a poem written by Azhari Mohammad Ali, who’s a figure of revolution in Sudan. So yes, I’m just always trying to read this reality from the inside. 

Every time I planned to shoot something, the situation at hand was ruining my plans.

You don’t need to be Islamophobic to want change, because this is a problem in France where it’s always about hating Islam. But I see Muslims that are proud to be Muslim but against the people who use Islam to control the bodies of women, to jail the people, to do horrible things. My father was someone like that. He wrote a book; the name translates to “Illusions of Political Islam.” He showed how ignorant people like al Qaeda or bin Laden were about their own religious civilization.

TD: Your film ends with updates on the activists. Most of them left Sudan, some moved to Egypt. Have things changed since?

HM: Khatab is now back in Sudan, and he’s fighting the militia, doing something he never wanted to do…serving in the same army that killed his friends during the revolution. It’s like death is everywhere and it’s only about surviving. Khatab kicked out the militia from Khartum, then he was in Kordofan. But now he has seen so many deaths, that he has no hope anymore. He wants to try to cross the border to leave Sudan, and is asking for help. He raised money and helped most of the people that were in the film to leave Sudan. When he decided to go back, I asked him, ‘Are you sure? Because you’re going to be trapped there.’ And now it’s been more than a year that he’s there, and doesn’t want to die there. It’s all very depressing.

TD: Are you hopeful?

HM: You need to keep the hope to stay alive. You need art to stay a human being. This is what the people do in the film. Now the situation is so bad that I don’t know what to say, but what I know from history is that war lasts till a certain point and then peace has to come back, because it’s not natural to be surrounded with death night and day. And life is stronger than death. I strongly believe in that. I made this film 100% believing that can happen. I believed with the Sudanese that it was possible, and I think we have to keep believing it, because if you stop, then it becomes the story told by the military. They want people to lose hope and surrender. We have to continue for the future generations. Even if we don’t experience peace, it will come. 

What the Sudanese people accomplished was not for nothing. It’s going to stay, it’s there. And that’s why the title of the film: remember us, remember what we accomplished. And the film is a live memory of all these things. 

TD: Have you had a Sudanese audience?

HM: In Sudan, the situation is too tense to play films but I showed the film in Calais. It’s a city next to England, where a lot of Sudanese people try crossing the border into England. People die at the fences, they die under the trucks, trying to cross the sea. In Calais, there were 250 Sudanese people who were trying to cross the border, who came to watch the film. It was incredible. People sitting on the floor. It was the most incredible screening I did, because at the end of the movie, people started to raise their hand and say, ‘I recognize my friends,’ ‘I saw myself in the film,’ ‘I was there that day,’ ‘I remember this.’ They said they were shot during a demonstration and showed their scar. Young people in their 20s hugged me and said, ‘Thank you so much, you gave us back our pride. We had forgotten about what we did, because we were humiliated during the war.’ 

Sudanese people, with this revolution, were reclaiming their own country from being stolen by the Emirates, Egypt and all the people who want to continue stealing the resources of Sudan. This is a new colonization. Sudanese people abroad in the Netherlands have accused the Emirates of complicity of genocide, and they brought it to the international Penal Court. It was not accepted, but they are preparing another action. The lobby of the Emirates is very strong, but Emirates is land grabbing, occupying Darfur, and they’re trying to have the country cut in two, so they can get all the rich land. 

TD: Genocide has become such a contested word now. Are you afraid to say it?

HM: We can say this word because the genocide already happened 22 years ago in Sudan. In Darfur, Arabs were massacring African tribes, ethnic cleansing and stealing land. It’s restarting again today. But you’re right, we can’t say it. That’s why I’m not a journalist anymore. When the audience comes out of the movie, they can understand that Sudanese people and their fight is universal, and that these people are very close to us. When you see the film, you understand Sudan is not a faraway country. There are people like us. This is precisely what you cannot find in the mainstream media, where people are just numbers or crowds.

TD: There are so many wars and people are tired of the news. What would you like for them to take away when they watch your film?

HM: I want them to realize that every human being on this planet is seeking the same thing: freedom, dignity, peace. It’s been thousands of years that people are fighting to get this and we share the same fight as human beings, no matter which color, which country, which continent or religion. I want people to understand that Sudan is much closer to them than they think. And they can be inspired by Sudanese people, because with their poetry, they’re teaching us how to stay a human being in the middle of death and war and chaos.

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