Series Site
The foundation of the Sudanese Film Group (SFG) by Eltayeb Mahdi, Ibrahim Shaddad, and Suliman Elnour in April of 1989 was the climax of a period of creative ferment that had been underway in Sudanese filmmaking since the late ’70s, when these three men began producing formally innovative and slyly subversive short films under state sponsorship. Staff at the Ministry of Culture’s cinema department, they formed the SFG, aspiring to artistic independence from government strictures—but their freedom was short-lived, ended by Omar al-Bashir’s military coup in June and subsequent theocratic rulership. Digitally restored in 2018, this too-brief surge in Sudanese cinema can now be discovered in all its glory by a new generation.