Since 1989 the Sudan has been led by Omar al-Bashir, who directed a military coup against a democratically elected government. Later elected president through electoral fraud, he has been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for allegedly heading a campaign of killing, rape, and pillage in Darfur in October 2005, which was estimated to have caused between 200,000 and 400,000 deaths, including a huge number of women and children. The African Union, the League of Arab States, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the governments of Russia and China all oppose the arrest warrant issued by the ICC against him.

This is the background – not directly evoked – of Suhaib Gasmelbari’s Talking About Trees, presented and highly regarded at the Berlinale’s Panorama section this year. The film starts in darkness, caused by one of the frequent electricity outages. Will there be a quick solution? Someone observes that «people are subservient» even at this level.

A people unable to move or act

The film focuses on a country in the midst of apathy and stagnation – the heavy smell of a fear to move or act is tangible throughout. Four older men spend their days and nights in partly nostalgic, partly humorous talks, remembering their past, but beyond that they are inspired by their new project: to bring the large open-air cinema Revolution back to life again. These four personalities are the filmmakers Ibrahim Shaddad, Suliman Ibrahim, and Eltayeb Mahdi, assisted by film producer Manar Al-Hilo. All of the filmmakers have won international awards. They studied at renowned film schools and were engaged in upcoming projects when «the cinema was killed» as one of them frankly declared on a radio program. In 1989 they founded the Sudanese Film Group with the intention of creating, distributing and promoting films, as well as restoring their national film treasures.

The heavy smell of a fear to move or act is tangible throughout.

Passionate people, we see them driving their old bus to small villages to improvise local screenings during the night. Using their personal mobile phones, they constantly produce film fragments often using themselves as actors, not without self-mockery, when for example one of them has to play a young girl. Taking great efforts for their main project, they clean the huge cinema space and the 13-metre screen wall for the upcoming screening. They ask people on the football field in the neighbourhood what they would prefer to see, knowing that they will be unable to screen «problematic» subjects. Just to revive a cinema as a place of common experience, meeting and discussion is stimulation enough for them, never losing their sense of humour and joking about a passionate kissing scene which will be interrupted by the «Allah is Great» refrain from one of the powerful loudspeaker systems on the surrounding mosques.

Their ideal would be to have no sponsors, no advertising, no speeches or presence of government ministers, just to prove that they can do something «without them and in spite of them».

A labyrinth of bureaucracy

Getting the permission of the cinema owner already poses a problem. He doesn’t want to risk any trouble. Renting professional equipment for the huge space is another challenge. Communications with the western cinema-business industry descend into the purely comic.

Obtaining official permission for a screening turns out to be a Kafkaesque labyrinth: they are sent from the ministry to the national security circle, then to the vice squad, back to national security, to the mayor, the executive service, political security and on.

Even having chosen the quite innocuous film Django, they are asked why they chose it, why they want to use a big screen, why they are gathering a lot of people, why this cinema and not another one. A summary is requested: are there indecent scenes or anything «contrary to moral behaviour»?

Not to speak directly about horror is the challenge.

To make a remarkable film about life under a dictatorship without evoking crimes but only their consequences is a problem which Suhaib Gasmelbari has solved in a quite convincing way – Talking About Trees was recognised with both the main documentary award and the audience award at the Berlinale.

One of the filmmakers declares: «There are times when talking about trees is almost a crime, because it implies silence about so many horrors.» Not to speak directly about horror is the challenge, but Gasmelbari shows that there are many ways to speak about «trees».

Rising up

Gasmelbari mixes his group portrait with excerpts from the filmmakers’ award-winning films from the seventies and eighties, as well as some well-selected television fragments such as the re-election speech in which al-Bashir declared his faked re-election as «God’s glorious victory» – he declared the Sudanese people to be those who gave the world a lesson in morality, integrity, transparency, and civility, while at the same time he gave thanks to police, military and the secret services who hunted down the traitors. The exploitation of religion can’t be expressed more precisely.

Obtaining official permission for a screening turns out to be a Kafkaesque labyrinth.

An excerpt from Ibrahim Shaddad’s film Rat, which states «…2013, 2014, 2015…» as the year of production, shows a man in a small, dirty toilet room, nearly motionless. Water drops fall constantly on his head as ongoing torture. He is unable to move himself to escape. But now there may have been one drop too many. Recent days have seen thousands of people back on the streets of the whole of Sudan revolting against Omar al-Bashir’s regime. Security forces have been using hit squads to defeat, abduct and detain protesters. Human rights groups confirm that 50 people have already been killed. Al-Bashir has handed over the leadership of the ruling National Congress Party to his deputy and key supporter Ahmed Haroun. Maybe Talking About Trees will mark the time of the complete end of a regime.