Coming to NYC’s Stranger Than Fiction series tonight, Tuesday, May 5: MADINA’S DREAM
Andrew Berends’ exploration of ongoing instability in Sudan made its debut at SXSW this Spring. It has also screened at Atlanta, Ashland, and Sarasota.
While the second Sudanese civil war officially ended in 2005, Sudan has decidedly not found peace in the past decade. What little mainstream media coverage there has been recently has focused on South Sudan’s successful bid for independence in 2011, ignoring the ongoing violence within Sudan itself, or the plight of its refugees. Despite its title, Berends’ well-lensed film is not the singular story of the occasionally seen eleven-year-old refugee who longs for home, but instead a more expansive view of the consequences of the civil war, set within South Sudanese refugee camps and the still dangerous Sudanese Nuba Mountains under siege by Sudanese government forces hunting for the rebel Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement. As revealed here, contending with an ongoing humanitarian crisis of displacement and genocidal government actions, the prospect for a peaceful future remains uncertain for the people of Sudan.
what (not) to doc 