From the author: It was the giant of Africa: a nation that once represented the best hope for peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Africans, Muslims and Christians. That hope is gone. The promise of Sudan was just an illusion.
It is a fractured country and in the long term, is unlikely to be an isolated northern and southern breaking after the referendum on the secession of the south.
Separatist movements in regions like Darfur and the Nuba Mountains are seeing more curiosity. And not just Sudan, other African countries and Arab independence factions sensed events in order that their movement is through the ballot box or the gun.
In the period before the referendum, who traveled to Sudan to do the film. I have been fortunate in my life to have visited most countries in the world and yet, this is the first time I had set foot in Africa’s largest.
To say that people of northern Sudan are extremely friendly may be a cliché, but it is also true. Shortly after our arrival, the car he had rented in Khartoum broke and we were quickly surrounded by young men, all trying to help discover and correct the fault. Nobody was looking for money, but simply came naturally to them for help and was just one example of many that are found in the following weeks.
Unfortunately, however, I also found the self-deception: in cafes, restaurants and streets, the vast majority of people I talked to wanted desperately to believe that it was too late and that, surely, the South will never leave the union. It will.
