Talking About Trees

Artists' fight for their existence and the right to exercise their creativity lie at the core of Talking About Trees, a beautiful film that premiered at the Berlin film festival earlier this year.

Suleiman and the three other members of a Sudanese film society share a passion for cinema, for restoring old films and for spreading knowledge about Sudan's film history. They wish to refurbish an old cinema theatre in the city of Omdourman and screen classics like Chaplin's Modern Times and more recent film such as like Tarantino's Django Unchained. The men also have other experiences in common: they have experienced repression and torture under the authoritarian regime that has ruled Sudan for years.

Talking About Trees is a strong and sympathetic story about resisting prohibition, censorship, and persecution, in a country that has been hard on its artists and cineasts.

Suhaib Gasmelbari (b. 1979) was born in Sudan, but studied film for eight years in France, where he went on to work for several years as an editor and cinematographer for TV channels such as Al Qarra, Al Jazeera and France 24. He has written and directed a series of shorts and documentaries. Talking About Trees is his first feature length film. Gasmelbari also works with restauration of Sudanese films that have been presumed lost.