Cotton Queen & Sudanese Stories | Suzannah Mirghani

Description

“It's a miracle that any film exists, but a film made during conflict, even more so.” We sit down with filmmaker, writer, and academic Suzannah Mirghani to discuss her latest film, Cotton Queen, and the harrowing reality of creating art while Sudan faces an ongoing genocide. Suzannah reveals the heartbreaking journey of a production displaced by war, where the cast and crew were forced to flee to Egypt to find safety and a space to continue their work. We explore the "miracle" of Sudanese cinema, a movement that refuses to be erased despite the systemic destruction of the country's tangible and intangible heritage. Suzannah discusses how storytelling becomes a vital act of resistance, preserving Sudanese dialects and histories that are currently under threat of being lost forever. 00:00 Introduction 01:02 From the Classroom to the Screen 01:41 The Heart of Cotton Queen 03:15 Sudan Front and Center in Doha 05:11 Ancestral Echoes and Formative Memories 07:01 Subverting Traditional Narrative Structures 08:31 When Time Becomes the Antagonist 10:20 Interconnecting the Threads of History 12:21 Production Amidst Displacement 15:17 The Doha Film Institute as a Mentor 16:45 Cultivating an Imagined Community 18:41 Borrowed Moods and Stolen Shots 20:10 Writing Cinematic Poetry 22:52 Pushing Back Against the Monolith 24:14 The Intricacy of Approachable Characters 26:12 Preserving Culture Through Dialect 28:31 Collective Relief and the Weight of Nostalgia 31:34 Safeguarding an Endangered Language 32:40 Intentional Programming at Georgetown 35:46 Tangible Outputs: From Conferences to Books 37:57 Merging Academic Research with Scriptwriting 40:02 Essential Literature and Cinematic Gems 42:50 Teaching the Nuanced Histories of Sudan Suzannah Mirghani is a Sudanese-Russian filmmaker and writer based in Doha, where she works as an editor at Georgetown University in Qatar. She is the writer and director of Al-Sit (2020), which won multiple international awards including the Canal+ Award at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festiva