DARFUR NOW at the Toronto Film Festival 2007
by Andre Soares
Cameron Bailey reviews Ted Braun’s (right) first theatrical documentary, Darfur Now, screening today at the Toronto Film Festival:
"The ongoing atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, remain one of the world’s great challenges — not just to our politicians but to each of us individually. Eventually, when the crisis ends, what can we say we did to help resolve it? This is the question that drives Ted Braun’s urgent, necessary new documentary. Darfur Now follows six people who have taken up the challenge to help stop the murder, rape and displacement the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit people of Darfur have suffered since 2003.
"One of those six is a movie star, and it is to this film’s great credit that his work on Darfur is stitched seamlessly together with the others’ efforts. Don Cheadle first became active in humanitarian crises in Africa after starring in Hotel Rwanda. Darfur Now shows him continuing to spend the currency of his celebrity to make the situation in Darfur more widely known and impossible to dismiss. ‘We’re trying to speak in a loud voice now,’ he says, ’so that people cannot say "I was unaware." They can only say "I acted" or "I stood by."’
…
"The title Darfur Now is no accident. This film insists that since the crimes continue now, now is the time to act."
The other five people portrayed in the film are fighter Hejewa Adam, UN World Food Program worker Pablo Recalde, displaced persons camp worker Ahmed Mohammed Abakar, The Hague’s International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, and U.S. activist Adam Sterling.
Toronto Film Festival 2007 - Awards
Toronto Film Festival 2007 Award Winners - Article
Toronto Film Festival 2007 - Contemporary World Cinema
Toronto Film Festival 2007 - Gala Screenings, Masters, Special Presentations
Toronto Film Festival 2007 Real to Reel Documentary Line-Up
Toronto Film Festival 2007 - Visions and Vanguard Sidebars
OBSCENE at the Toronto Film Festival 2007
San Sebastian Film Festival 2007 - Zabaltegi (New Directors) Sidebar
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