Heroic Bodies highlights the development of the Sudanese women’s movement within the framework of body politics. Researcher and activist Sara Suliman’s directorial debut investigates how the human body became a common refractor for both repression and resistance to the state, patriarchy, and colonial oppression, during the eras of British colonialism and post-independence. Footage includes interviews with leading activists, artists and academics, plus rare archive footage. This documentary uncovers the creative practices that contributed to the process of Sudanese women’s emancipation, transforming violated bodies into “Heroic Bodies”.

Sara Suliman is a UK-based Sudanese Filmmaker; A Chevening scholar, researcher, activist, Producer, and Director; And founder of “Fenti (Dates in Nubian Dialect) Productions” an Independent Film Production House. This Special Screening is in partnership with Batikh Batikh Collective, a Philadelphia-based pop-up cinema and gallery that centers South-West Asian North African (SWANA) women and queer artists.

Preceded by the short film Dead As A Dodo (2022) lays bare the settler colonial mythology at the heart of the popular narrative of the Dodo’s extinction. By drawing on archival material and the Dodo’s apparition the film performs a sensory haunting, reviving the spaces between life and death that have been shaped by settler violence into a value-forming exercise. This work is inspired by and is in conversation with a book of poems titled A Theory of Birds by the Palestinian-American poet Zaina Alsous.

Leena Habiballa is a cultural worker with an interest in Sudanese visual/material cultures and community filmmaking/exhibition models. She explores these themes through art/film criticism, research, and her own filmmaking practice. She is currently Assistant Producer at Other Cinemas and a member of the artist workers' cooperative not-nowhere.

This Special Screening is in partnership with Batikh Batikh Collective, a Philadelphia-based pop-up cinema and gallery that centers South-West Asian North African (SWANA) women and queer artists.