FILM SYNOPSIS

Up until now, the perilous events in Darfur have been explained by outsiders, or by so called leaders and officials, who often to do not communicate the complexity of the situation. In All About Darfur, Sudanese filmmaker Taghreed Elsanhouri talks with ordinary Sudanese in outdoor tea shops, markets, refugee camps and living rooms about how deeply rooted prejudices could suddenly burst into a wild fire of ethnic violence. The film includes interviews with intellectuals, activists, and genocide survivors and pays particular attention to the opinions and concerns of women.

Elsanhouri returns from Britain to her homeland to discover why the seemingly racially harmonious country of her childhood has become the scene of one of the worst instances of ethnic cleansing in recent history. "I was uniquely qualified to tell the story of race," says Elsanhouri. "Growing up in Sudan as a northerner, I know what it is to belong to a dominant group. As a black woman in Britain living with racism, I also know what it is like to be marginalized as a minority. It is this double consciousness that informs my story."

Elsanhouri and her cameraman journey overland from Khartoum, Sudan's capital, to the Abu Shoak, a refugee camp in Darfur that is home to 100,000 of the 800000 people displaced by this worsening conflict. Along the way, she exposes us to the dialogs that the Sudanese themselves are having about the crisis in Darfur. Some recount tales of witnessing the slaughter of their families while others, who truly believe that Sudan is racially harmonious, deny that ethnic cleansing is taking place. Their contradictory accounts reveal how difficult a task it will be to stop the Darfur genocide.

While documenting the atrocities taking place in Darfur, Elsanhouri investigates how notions of race and ethnicity are constructed in Sudan. In one scene, Elsanhouri visits the elementary school she had previously attended. Just as in the days of her childhood, the students reenact the battles which led to the formation of Sudan, with the lighter skinned children playing Turks and Arabs, and the darker skinned children playing the vanquished Africans. Despite its significance, race, Elsanhouri discovers, may be too crude a concept to understand Sudan's bitter ethnic conflict. Ultimately, Elsanhouri encourages viewers to understand that the ethnic strife in Darfur is a product of scarcity, as Darfurians are dividing along ethnic lines to battle for limited resources.