Talking About Trees (2019)

Directed by

Suhaib Gasmelbari

Genre

documentary film

Country

Sudan, Chad, France

Runtime

1h 30m

Rated

G

Rating

7.2 of 10 from 17 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

The film follows retired Sudanese filmmakers as they try to reopen an old outdoor cinema in Omdurman. They face many obstacles from government censorship and bureaucracy in their effort to screen movies again.

slow-burnmelancholichopefulreflectivefrustratinggentlewistfulcontemplative

What happens

Talking About Trees (Arabic: الحديث عن الأشجار) is a 2019 documentary film directed by Sudanese film director Suhaib Gasmelbari. It follows the efforts of the Sudanese Film Group, represented by retired filmmakers Ibrahim Shadad, Manar Al Hilo, Suleiman Mohamed Ibrahim and Altayeb Mahdi, to reopen an outdoor movie theater in the city of Omdurman in the face of decades of Islamist censorship and inefficient bureaucracy. According to film critic Jay Weissberg, the title of the film "comes from Bertolt Brecht’s 1940 poem To Those Born Later, in which he laments the suppression of discussion under dictatorship, and how shifting the discourse to mundane topics painfully draws attention to what can’t be spoken aloud." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

More like this

• You Will Die at 20 (2019)
• Transnistra (2019)
• Silent Streams (2019)
• The Fever (2019)
• Permanent Green Light (2019)
• A Tale of Three Sisters (2019)
• It Must Be Heaven (2019)
• The Orphanage (2019)