Heroic Bodies: Sara Suliman's powerful film on Sudanese feminism and body politics

Like many women, UK-based Sudanese filmmaker Sara Suliman had long known she was a feminist but did not know the term for it.

Sara had always been passionate about activism. Several years ago, while working at a university in the UAE, she suddenly realised that this was not what she wanted to do with her life and that her calling was women’s rights activism.

While studying for her Masters in Gender Studies at SOAS in London, her supervisor noticed Sara's obsession with the theory of body politics.

This led to Sara choosing the Sudanese women’s movement, body politics, and the process of emancipation as her final dissertation topic.

After spending hours scouring through archival footage, photographs, and newspaper clippings on the Sudanese women’s political movement, Sara realised that not many people were aware of this monumental period in Sudan’s history.

“When I finished my Masters and was on my way back to Sudan, I told myself, ‘That’s it, I’m going to make a film. This information must reach everyone, starting with the Sudanese youth,’” Sara tells The New Arab.

“Our youth have an identity crisis; they aren’t nationalistic and they don’t read a lot, and I think this is a problem in general in the Arab world.”

Her 95-minute documentary, Heroic Bodies, had its world premiere in 2022 at IDFA in Amsterdam, the world’s biggest documentary film festival.

Sara says it took four years to make; there were specific individuals she wanted to include from Sudan’s first wave of feminists, and she travelled the world to interview them. In some cases, she had to wait over a year to secure an interview.

“It was about documentation,” she explains. “Like Fatima Babiker Mahmoud, who is a writer and researcher and has books about this subject, so you’ve got the information directly from the source.

"These are people who witnessed things themselves, like Fatima Al Gaddal, who is very old now; she was part of the first Sudanese feminist movement.”

Sudanese women's historical struggle

Heroic Bodies not only charts the multiple ways in which throughout history Sudanese women’s bodies have been exploited by a patriarchal society, British colonialists, and authoritarian rulers but also the long history of Sudanese women liberating themselves from customs and traditions that oppress and harm their mental and physical health.

Surviving first-wave Sudanese feminists give eyewitness accounts of the first time Sudanese high school girls joined forces to seize their right to education.

We are given an inside look at the first high school strike in 1949 in Omdurman when girls weren’t allowed to study science and demanded to sit exams like their male counterparts. 

Through archival footage, photographs, and interviews, we are privy to an exciting time in Sudanese political history, when women formed the first Women’s Union in the 50s and were instrumental in outlawing forced marriages (there was a case of three girls dying by suicide after being forced into marriage).

In 1964, the October Revolution takes place, and Sudanese women gain the right to vote; Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim is the first woman in Arab and African history to run for MP.

The Sudanese feminists in the film, such as Fatima Babiker Mahmoud and Fatima Al-Gaddal, share some deeply personal and painful memories of customs and traditions that were once widespread in Sudan, such as facial skin scarring or shulukh, FGM or khitan, and re-infibulation.

These are all traumatic and dangerous procedures that were done for various reasons (shulukh for “beauty,” khitan to “protect the family’s honour,” and re-infibulation following childbirth for the husband’s sexual gratification).

“The details that the feminists in my film gave, they gave freely by themselves – I didn’t ask them to. This came from their strong belief that these stories needed to be told. This is when your goal is bigger than your personal needs,” highlights Sara.

“They believe that the world really needs to know the suffering of the Sudanese women.”

Beyond Heroic Bodies' feminist message

Heroic Bodies has achieved what Sara set out to do. She hoped that each person who watched her film would take away just one small idea that would challenge their way of thinking.

The proof was in the pudding when one of Sudan’s most prominent male journalists watched her film.

“After he saw the film, he made a comment that I will never forget. He was supposed to interview me about the film. He watched the film, and I expected him to call me right after. He didn’t call back,” Sara says.

“The next day he called me and said, ‘Do you know what happened to me? I watched the film, and when I finished, I left the room, went to my balcony, lit a cigarette, and my mind was swirling. I needed some time.

"It was the first time in my life that I felt my mother’s suffering, my aunt’s suffering, the suffering of the women who are important to me. It’s the first time I felt these feelings.’ So, my film really broke barriers.”

Sara says her film has resonated with viewers worldwide because they can connect with the idea that women are controlled through their bodies. Body politics is universal. 

“The control differs from countries in the West to those in the Arab world, but still, women’s suffering is similar,” she adds.

“For example, here in the West, there are still many places where women aren’t in certain leadership positions. It all goes back to body politics.

"But there are differences. What women in the West ask for, for women in the Middle East and Africa is a luxury. But in the end, it is all suffering through our bodies.”

However, Sara has not produced Heroic Bodies as proof to Western viewers that Sudanese women are oppressed.

Such narratives are not a call-out for white saviours. The message of the film is the exact opposite.

Heroic Bodies is a call for today’s Sudanese feminists to reflect on the ingenuity and skill of Sudan’s first feminists and to seize their rights.

Sudanese women have always mobilised and liberated themselves; they haven’t waited for anyone else to grant them rights.

“The West has this saviour complex; that as Sudanese women we are victims. They look at us and assume that we have had FGM or that if we wear hijab it was forced on us.

"There have been instances where our women have attended conferences and Western people have come up to them and asked, ‘Were you circumcised?’ They stereotype us this way. So, we need to educate these societies,” Sara explains.

“As women, we have to grasp our rights with our hands and take them by force – this is the only way for our rights to return to us.”

Yousra Samir Imran is a British Egyptian writer and author based in Yorkshire. She is the author of Hijab and Red Lipstick, published by Hashtag Press

Follow her on Twitter: @UNDERYOURABAYA