‘Khartoum’: Sundance Review

Dirs. Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy, Timeea M Ahmed & Phil Cox, Sudan/UK/Germany/Qatar, 2025. 81 mins.

Sudanese documentary Khartoum walks some significant miles in the shoes of its subjects. Majdi, Khadmallah, Jawad and street children Lokain and Wilson were struggling to get by in the capital when their city erupted under gunfire, forcing them – and the film-makers documenting their lives – to flee. Through a lattice of re-enactments (bearing memories of Four Daughters) shot in exile and on-the-ground footage skilfully edited by Yousef Jubeh, Khartoum brings their stories back to moving life. Such is the fury of events in Sudan that political context almost has to take second place; this is a film you watch to understand that war is only ever about its victims.

Walks some significant miles in the shoes of its subjects

Yet war for Sudan is ongoing; it is the country which has suffered the most coups in Africa since gaining independence (19). But what happened in 2023 rained destruction on Khartoum as the forces of the SAF and RSA attacked each other with the general populace as collateral: 10 million people displaced, with a resulting famine which rages on. Khartoum shows us five lost souls who scatter for Kenya and Egypt, attempting to rebuild their lives but also trying to reconcile with what happened via green-screen, animations and re-enactments with each other. 

Premiering at Sundance, Khartoum is a thematic continuation of Sudan, Remember Us, which bowed at Venice last year and catalogued the freedom protests which immediately preceded the current conflict. The grit and determination of its subjects and the film-makers will see Khartoum into wide festival circulation following Sundance, and its spirit will linger and inspire. Its background – funds to make the interrupted documentary were used to get the film-makers out of Sudan, who then launched a search to find their protagonists – will provide a talking point.

It’s easy to comprehend — without even looking at the credits – that it has taken an almighty effort to put Khartoum together, before even labs and funders and post-production grants played their parts. British director Phil Cox helped initiate the project, which started as a film about the democracy protests which followed the coup in October 2021 (it deposed the civilian prime minister who followed the long-term dictator Omar al-Bashir). Eventually the AD/editor Jubeh took over the co-ordination: his skill is present in a tour-de-force three minute opening which not only also introduces the five protagonists but offers a very broad political context for the city. “It’s the truth, and we must share it,” says tea stand owner Khadmallah, now eking out an existence as a refugee in Nairobi with her young daughter.

The sense of change in the air post-al-Bashir had a different effect on Khartoum’s principals. 12 year-old Lokain and Wilson, aged 11, street lads of undetermined parentage, led a life free of supervision in the slums, busy collecting empty plastic water bottles from a donkey-pulled cart, when the RSF forces arrived with their guns. There’s a sense thatthey may eventually achieve a better life than that which awaited them in Khartoum: providing the child’s eye of events that make no sense to an adult either, they appear scrubbed up and ready for school in Kenya, even though the events they have witnessed will leave indelible scars.

Jawad, meanwhile, is a genial young resistance volunteer, now living with his family in Egypt.  Footage from Khartoum shows him on a motorbike, transporting the injured and the dead. Finally, Majdi is a government official whose status makes him a walking target: all he wants to do, though, is talk about pigeons with his pals at a Khartoum coffee shop. 

Footage brought from Sudan by the five exiled film-makers strongly suggests the hearts and souls of its subjects; many secondary players are almost certainly dead by now, or in exile too. The scenes re-staged in exile in Kenya in front of a green screen tell their stories of escape, and recall their terror. (The children are clearly shown receiving psychological support.) It’s a gripping and often heart-rending process. Sudanese politics are notoriously complex and affected by external players, from Ethiopia to the UAE, but Khartoum simplifies the process by which two generals wage a war and the population dies.