Film and Culture in Sudan’s Civil War: In Conversation with Ibrahim Ahmad
- Solomon Njombai
- Jul 1, 2024
- 17 min read
Updated: Jun 27
Sudanese filmmaker Ibrahim Ahmad exposes human rights abuses through his award-winning films. Chronicling the atrocities in Sudan, his work fights for justice and a better future.
CJLPA: We would like to begin by thanking you for taking the time to interview with The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art. Your extensive career as a film maker, combined with your expertise as an activist, provides a valuable perspective on pressing Sudanese human rights issues and political questions, and their overlap. We would specifically like to examine key issues in respect to the film industry in Sudan and the issues it has faced under different regimes in Sudan, but also more broadly in the name of human rights. I wanted to begin by asking you to briefly outline your career and what prompted your decision to delve into the field of human rights advocacy?
Ibrahim Ahmad: I started film making in 2014. First, we started with a short fiction film—a drama about my late aunt. We posted it on YouTube and got positive reviews from our friends. For that, we shot the film with whatever cameras we had, and we had a lot of technical issues. But through the years, we developed ourselves and each time we make a film, we progress a bit into understanding the art of filmmaking.
By the last film, which is soon to be released, we fully understand how filmmaking is made in the whole distribution, production, and how to bring on talent. We don’t have professional academics in Sudan, so you just learn by mistakes. There’s no institute that teaches us filmmaking, and even the universities that have filmmaking are too weak. They don’t give you the full stretch of filmmaking. They just teach video production rather than film production because film is way broader. I decided to leave because I was living in a difficult area next to the airport, and we all know that the airport is one of the important places when it comes to war because either side wants to seize it, to be able to halt their travels or even make use of the airplanes for themselves.
When I was initially aware of what was happening, our building where we were living was immediately raided by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary force that makes up one side of the ongoing conflict in Sudan, and we couldn’t really move around with ease, so we had to sneak out in the back, and we couldn’t even go to the shops. All of the shops around were destroyed or began to be destroyed or emptied because people were panicking. We had to leave because there was no electricity, no water, so it was unbearable. I went to my friend’s house in another state nearby to regroup and understand what’s going to happen. Because Sudan was lacking professional videographers, I media outlets began reaching out to me and I started to do reports on what was happening in Sudan.
Initially, I started interviewing people who were coming from Khartoum to that city. That city [where I was staying] was one of the main cities to travel to or to pass by because it was safe. I went out to interview people about the situation, what they went through, and how many days it took them to reach there. Even though it was just a three-hour drive from the capital city, some people said it took them seven or eight hours to come there because the road was full of RSF and all these checkpoints, and also, they couldn’t go through the main road because it was dangerous, so they had to take shortcuts or navigate through the desert in order to reach to a safe place. Other than that, a lot of camps were created and schools and dorms in almost all hospitals, so an influx of people was coming in. We went out and interviewed them, also asking what was happening to them, how was the journey, what they’ve lost, and what they wish they had at that moment. A lot of them lost their houses and their belongings and some of them were willing to go back home because they couldn’t bear the idea that they were away from their home and their valuables left behind.
