Every now and then, there's a documentary that hits you so hard in the pit of your stomach that you have a hard time recovering. Two years ago it was Darwin's Nightmare, a terrifying film that revealed unspeakable layers of hopelessness in the ecologic, economic, and social disaster facing the towns surrounding Lake Victoria.
This year, it's The Devil Came on Horseback, which captures better than any news story the horror of the Darfur genocide and the doubly horrifying shrug of the international community.
Darfur isn't the most popular topic at this site, but give me a chance to convince you: you must see this film.
Late last Thursday night, after the keynote address at yearlykos, we wandered into a screening of the documentary, which I had recently read about online. We left two hours later hardly able to speak: it was a painful experience coming face to face with one's own apathy towards what is arguably the worst atrocity of our generation.
View the Trailer
Briefly put, the film follows the work of former U.S. Marine Brian Steidle, who captured harrowing photographs of the genocide while working as a monitor in Sudan. Steidle's job was simply to record potential breaches in the regional ceasefires, and he was not allowed in any way to intervene. As his reports of brutal eradication of whole villages went unnoticed, he channeled his rage into a risky interview with Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, hoping that his photographs would shock the international community into action.
And they almost did, for a time: Steidle was given prime place in the interview cycle. But one should never underestimate the powerful apathy of the viewing public. The United States government put it on the backburner. The United Nations failed to act. The government of Sudan blithely denied that anything bad was happening. Audiences yawned and changed the channel.
In the meantime, of course, we've been mired in wall-to-wall coverage of Iraq. Darfur has become, at best, a blip in the news cycle.
What can I possibly say to convince you to see this film?
Brutal, urgent, devastating — the documentary "The Devil Came on Horseback" demands to be seen as soon as possible and by as many viewers as possible.
- Mahnola Dargis, The New York Times
I'm pretty sure that Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern's documentary "The Devil Came on Horseback" has the most horrifying images I have ever seen in a motion picture. There aren't words to describe them, really. There are pictures of people who have been tortured and burned alive, children who have been chained in place and hacked to pieces, corpses reduced to ghostly outlines of ash on the ground, people so badly mutilated you can't identify them as male or female, child or adult. You won't sleep well after you see this movie, and I don't suppose you should.
- Andrew O'Hehir, Salon
The persuasive documentary The Devil Came On Horseback contains dozens of photographs that testify to this tragedy, yet the apathy pierces hardest of all. These images and reports have stirred consciences without quite stirring decisive action, and an earnest indie doc like this one seems like another cry in the wilderness.
- Scott Tobais, The Onion AV Club
It is also a sickeningly effective call to action that asks how we in the most powerful nation on the planet can, even in the presence of a smoking gun, remain so loath to effect change.
- Scout Foundas, LA Weekly
If you haven't read Kristof's devastating op-ed (he won the Pulitzer last year), here's a link. This was published on February 23, 2005, with photographs that Steidle smuggled back on his computer. That's over two years ago, and our policy in Sudan has not changed one bit. At the time, Kristof wrote,
I'm sorry for inflicting these horrific photos on you. But the real obscenity isn't in printing pictures of dead babies - it's in our passivity, which allows these people to be slaughtered.
Please go see this film. It may not tell you anything you didn't already know, but it will light a fire under you to get involved, even in some small way.
Their website has a list of Festival dates when the film will be screened. You can also look for local showtimes, although the film is not getting a wide release.
Thanks to edkholer for having mentioned this film back in May, and to diarists like Alegre, who has banged this drum consistently in the face of low readership.
[update] terrypinder has a link to the myspace page for Rock for Darfur, which includes the trailer for the film, as well.
[update2] Also don't forget that the book version of events is available here.