Unrated
In Arabic and English with subtitles.
Running time: 55 minutes
Studio: Cinema Libre Studio
DVD Extras: Interviews, photos and featurettes.

DVD Review by Kam Williams

Excellent (4 stars)

While the U.S. has seen fit to intervene to save the citizens of Iraq from Saddam Hussein, it’s sad to think that nothing is being done about the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Sudan. At last count, over 2000 villages had been destroyed and about 400,000 people had perished in the government-sanctioned slaughter which has sent hundreds of thousands scurrying across the border to refugee camps and 2,000,000 more simply on the run.

As delineated in Darfur Diaries, the problem stems from Sudan’s Arab-run government giving free rein to the Janjaweed, a federation of nomadic Muslim tribes to pillage Africa’s largest nation’s black communities. Sudan’s air force actively assists the aggressors in this endeavor by bombing and strafing not only villages, but even the refugee camps.

The film was shot in 2004 by three Westerners, Aisha Bain, Jen Marlowe and Adam Shapiro, intrepid filmmakers who risked life and limb to bring back interviews which just tug at your heartstrings. We hear from women who have been brutally raped, from starving orphans scarred by watching their parents die, and from lost souls at their wit’s end living under trees and with nowhere to go.

An urgent call for the world community to do much more than merely observe this ever-worsening humanitarian crisis as it continues to unfold.

 

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