|
THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK exposes the genocide in Darfur, Sudan as seen through the eyes of an American witness, former U.S. Marine Captain Brian Steidle, who served as an unarmed military observer with the African Union from 2004 through 2005.
Shaped by Brian’s personal journey -- using on-the-ground video and more than 1,000 of his exclusive photographs of the emerging crisis in Darfur -- the film reveals the horrors of a government waging a dark war on its citizens, creating a gripping and uncompromising expose of this ongoing genocide.
Brian spent over a year in Sudan, and six months as an official military observer in Darfur, with military intelligence and access to parts of the country that no journalists could penetrate. Just 27 years old, Brian was unprepared for what he would experience – daily he witnessed the brutal slaughtering of men, women and children yet was unable to intervene – and for what he would learn about Sudan and its government.
Armed with a pen, paper and a camera, Brian’s only defense was to document the evidence and capture proof of an Arab government bent on destroying its black African citizens. Ultimately frustrated by the African Union’s inability to take action, Brian resigned and smuggled more than 1000 photographs back to the United States. Haunted by what he witnessed, Brian became driven to expose the images and stories behind this ongoing genocide, with the hope of compelling international intervention.
In March 2005, Nicholas Kristof, journalist for the New York Times, first published Brian’s photographs and broke his story. There was enormous public and media response. The U.S. State Department contacted Brian to ask him to stop showing his photographs to the American public. He was warned by the African Union that he was putting himself at risk. He was accused of profiteering. Brian discovered that he was on the Sudanese Government’s watch list. Brian responded by taking his photos on the road to educate political leaders and people worldwide about what was unfolding in Sudan.
In late 2005, now unable to return to Darfur for fear of his own safety, Brian was hungry for current information on the crisis. He wanted an update from people on the ground, and he wanted to connect with survivors for personal reasons, in an effort to make sense of what he had witnessed in Darfur. He traveled to refugee camps in Chad, searching for survivors of the violence he documented, and seeking relatives of the dead he photographed.
After Chad, Brian traveled to Rwanda for the genocide memorial, and to understand the emotional and political struggles faced by countries that seek to rebuild after genocide. Brian met with survivors from Sierra Leone, from Rwanda, from Cambodia, from the Holocaust. He went from Rwanda back into the speaking field, touring again in the US and internationally, this time to build awareness for a Washington DC rally in late April 2006 geared to motivate US political leaders to take action in Darfur. Days after this rally, a fragile peace agreement was signed in Darfur between the Sudanese government and the largest rebel group. As shown by increasing aggression, this agreement is not holding and the crisis is now spreading into Chad, threatening to destabilize the region.
The film hauntingly chronicles Brian’s life-altering time in Darfur and his journey to make
public his experience and responsibility to this crisis. Drawing from personal interviews,
Brian’s home movies, video and audio recordings from the field in Darfur, his travels in the
US, Chad, the UK and Rwanda – intercut with the most recent footage obtainable provided
by renegade sources in Darfur – the film cinematically details the events and causes that
shape this crisis.
Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern recently co-directed and co-produced the award-winning documentary The Trials of Darryl (VIFF 2006) Hunt, a production of Break Thru Films. The Trials of Darryl Hunt was short-listed for the 2007 Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature, and was a 2007 Independent Spirit Award nominee for Best Documentary. That film won awards at more than twenty festivals to date, and premiered on HBO in spring 2007, with theatrical release (ThinkFilm) in summer 2007.
|
