‘Khartoum’ Review: A Collective of Filmmakers Captures an Embattled City With Ingenuity and Hopeful Spirit

variety.com:

Murtada Elfadl In “Khartoum,” five protagonists and four filmmakers tell the story of a city brimming with such life that even a long and vicious war could not dim it.

The filmmakers started making “Khartoum” before the war broke out in April 2023. When all of the participants were forced to leave Sudan before they could finish filming, they gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, to find refuge in each other while coming up with inventive ways to tell a story that could only be told in the eponymous city they love.

This spirited perseverance and creative work ethic make “Khartoum” a necessary watch. The five protagonists are Lokain and Wilson, two pre-teen bottle collectors trying to eke out a living.

Jawad volunteers at his local resistance committee against the military dictatorship. Khadmallah, a tea stall owner from Sudan’s western Nuba Mountains, has managed to make her small corner of the city an oasis for friends and passersby to gather and commiserate.