Khartoum review: Hybrid, self-reflexive doc captures the power of alliance

HT at Sundance | Five citizens of Khartoum come together to reenact their stories of survival and form a community in this new documentary.

How does one define the horrors of witnessing war? There's no one definitive way one can personally respond to a catastrophe that could alter lives forever, force many to flee their homes, with no clear sight of the future. In Khartoum, the fascinating new documentary created by Sudanese filmmaker Anas Saeed which premiered at Sundance Film Festival this year, five residents of Khartoum try to process what they witnessed, and find imaginative ways to respond to their realities. (Also read: Didn't Die movie review: Meera Menon's zombie apocalypse ride offers few thrills)

Khartoum is created by Sudanese filmmaker Anas Saeed.

The premise

Lokain and Wilson are the youngest, who work as bottle collectors. They are joined by Majdi, a civil servant; Jawad, a resistance committee volunteer; and Khadmallah, a tea stall owner. The five of them had originally planned to film in Sudan to share their daily realities in the time of political unrest. But along with creative director and writer Phil Cox, they had to flee to East Africa when war broke out all of a sudden. Now, with a completely different set of circumstances, Khartoum emerges as a hybrid, self-reflexive documentary of these voices reenacting their stories of survival and connecting with each other to form an alliance.

This is a documentary that does not want to fit itself into any fixed mode of observation. It is a film that emerges as it moves along, a vital sort of experiment that places the subject above everything else. The film takes into account all of their different stories and emerges into one pastiche of memory, trauma, loss and resilience. It turns the medium of cinema as a sort of combative force, that allows them to come together in this difficult time. This is a film that does not know where it leads, so it moves ahead and finds itself along the way. It is about the impression of war, where the act of filmmaking itself becomes a sort of implicit resistance.

What works

Khartoum proceeds along with its use of green screen technology, where each of them tell their stories of perceiving what happened, and sometimes the director also interjects in between the frame, to comfort them at times. The scenes mystify, with its perceptive use of animation in capturing the chaos and bewilderment of witnessing the horrors of war firsthand. One of the most moving scenes see the two young boys make sense of everything around them by creating a imaginary place, where they are the kings and the best part is that there are no ‘stupid’ grownups around.

These visual flourishes are scrappy and disjointed, enmeshed together as a sort of reflection that cannot be integrated as a single, uniform document. The use of music is key, often punctuating these scenes with a sense of optimism. Khartoum speeds along in its meta-document approach, interjecting even the crew in some of its wider frames. It weaves a fantastical and altogether poignant reminder of the power of community and human spirit.

Santanu Das is covering Sundance Film Festival 2025 as part of the accredited press.