Feature Narrative Film
TOTAL BUDGET
€480,286
CONFIRMED FINANCING
€435,286
CONTACTS
marie.balducchi@agatfilms.com
+33 153363229
+33 676873516
suhaib_gasem@hotmail.com
+249 904641042
+33 659089926
Ibrahim, Soliman, Manar and Altayeb are four Sudanese filmmakers and close friends for more than 45 years. They tirelessly try to inspire the love of cinema in a wounded country
Their names are Ibrahim, Soliman, Manar, Altayeb, and they are few of the first Sudanese who had the opportunity to study cinema in East Germany, the Soviet Union and Egypt in the 1960s and 1970s. They are all members of the Sudanese Film Group, idealists and intensely humane. Their love for cinema is limitless.
After more than 15 years of distance and exile, they are reunited to bring their old dream back to life: make cinema a reality in Sudan and allow films to be available to all. They are determined to keep moving, to leave a trace of their passage. They roam the roads with their van to screen films and to inspire love for cinema. Through their quest for images – for those who exist, those who could have existed and those that have been lost or censored – the beautiful and horrific face of their country appears.
“Why did you return to Sudan, what do you want to do? Go back to Europe, make European movies or sit here with us on our waiting bench?” That is the dilemma I was presented with by my Sudanese elders. The elders in question are the filmmakers who founded the Sudanese Film Group in 1989. They are now aged between 70 and 83 and travel throughout the country with the small mobile cinema they have founded. They pass their knowledge onto people and inspire their love for cinema, despite the hardships and despite their canvas screen that cannot withstand storms.
This is the tale of their 45 years of attempting to make films and of the tireless hope that unites them forever. The story of a struggle of a gang of four crafty men with a witty sense of humor.
The Waiting Bench brings out of the shadow four flamboyant Sudanese filmmakers, who use the cinema as a desire for light and poetry, strongly believing in what they call the “luminous landscape of this beautiful art.”
When I saw the first images that Suhaib brought back from Sudan, I felt deeply touched by the strength of soul and the friendship and solidarity connecting Ibrahim, Suleiman, Manar and Altayeb. They are cultivated old men but they joke and tease each other like a group of teenagers. This fascinating mix of creative intensity and genuine affection makes them instantly endearing.
Suhaib wanted to explore a cinematographic tangent, in the form of a nostalgic and brilliant tale balanced between documentary and fiction. The Waiting Bench will be the opportunity of a rare insight in the Sudanese cinematography as well as the discovery of a new talented filmmaker.
2017: Oblomov by Guillaume Gallienne
2016: A Young Girl in Her Nineties by Valeria Bruni, Tedeschi and Yann Coridian
2015: The Three Sisters by Valeria Bruni
2014: National Diploma by Dieudo Hamadi