Hind Meddeb

Hind Meddeb chronicles the tenacity of young Sudanese protestors who challenged their country’s autocratic rule, undeterred by the might of a repressive regime. Sawtna, Slahna—Our Voices as Only Weapons—portrays the uneven struggle that pitted the voices of the revolution against the fire of the militia.

In May 2019, Hind was filming the revolutionary pro-democracy sit-in in Khartoum. The protest lasted 57 days before a brutal crackdown, by the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces on 3rd June that year. Faced with a powerful army and a genocidal militia—whose actions in Darfur qualify as crimes against humanity—the protestors could have lost heart early on. But they were led by their resilient dreams, powerful imaginations, and poetic discourse.

“We are the flames that won’t stop burning.” In Sudan, poetry is part of everyday life. It emerges in the middle of political discussions, during demonstrations, in private, or on the streets. The country’s leading dissidents are all poets. Imprisoned or forced into exile, they were prevented from being published. Yet, their words carried through intervening decades to be embraced by a new generation. The on-going movement is resolutely pacifist, inventive, and resistant to the attempts to repress it. Those who wrote the poetry, and those who now recite it, are both immortalised by the endurance of their struggle.

At the sit-in, Hind encountered young political activists—Shajane, Muzamil, Maha, Rufaida, Hamza, Eros, and Saber—striving for change, with their words as their only weapon. By intertwining their stories through the film, she connects the pieces of a revolution-in-progress.