Short film
The Rope
الحبل
Ibrahim Shaddad · 1985
Synopsis
Two blind men cross the desert, accompanied by a donkey. A rope links them: sometimes it is the two men who choose the way, sometimes the donkey who leads them. The film, without dialogue, follows this hesitant march across the empty expanse, where their dependence on one another constantly changes direction and where one ends up doubting who is guiding whom.
Context
Produced in Khartoum by the public film service, the film runs thirty-two minutes, in colour and without dialogue; Tawfig O. Fagir was responsible for the cinematography, Abdel Gadir Daoud for the editing, and Eltayeb Mahdi was assistant director. Long unseen, it is one of the seven films by this group of filmmakers digitised and restored in 2018 by the Arsenal in Berlin, and was shown the following year at the Berlinale's Forum Expanded.
Who it is for
A half-hour short film, a parable more than a story; a digital copy has been screened since 2019.
Prizes and reception
Long withheld from screens like most of its author's films, it has circulated since its restoration in retrospectives devoted to Sudanese cinema.