THE LONGEST KISS
72 min, Documentary, Quebec, Canada, 2013Directed byAlexandra Sicotte-Lévesque
Produced byAlexandra Sicotte-Lévesque
LanguagesEnglish, Arabic
Six young Sudanese searching for a place to call ‘home’ ahead of their country’s inevitable fragmentation.
Press reviews
(The film) is fascinating becauseit tells personal stories rather than just recounting the major socio-political events that have rocked the country The Gazette L'auteure parvient (...) à toucher des enjeux universels Le DevoirFilm details
Synopsis
The meeting of the Blue and White Nile in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, is referred to as ‘the longest kiss in history’. As the Arab Spring was in full bloom, Sudan, straddling between the Middle East and Africa, was about to split in two. The film follows six young Sudanese searching for a place to call ‘home’ as their journeys take us up and down the Nile, between north and south Sudan, ahead of the south’s secession. Facing conflicting identities, youth in north Sudan grapple with a stale dictatorship while others in south Sudan hope to start over—but at what costs? For the first time a film gives a voice to Sudanese youth from different origins, Muslims and Christians. It is an intimate portrait of a complex society that bears witness to its inevitable fragmentation.
Credits
Script and Direction : Alexandra Sicotte-Lévesque
Direction of Photography : Katerine Giguere
Sound Design : Jean-François Sauvé
Sound Recording : Alexandra Sicotte-Lévesque
Editing : Myriam Magassouba, Diego Briceno
Music : Olivier Allary
Producer : Alexandra Sicotte-Lévesque
Executive Producer : Yanick Letourneau
Production : Périphéria Productions
Financial Partners
FMC
SODEC
Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
Shaw Media
Hotdocs
Patrimoine canadien
Super channel
Direction
Alexandra Sicotte-Lévesque
Alexandra Sicotte-Lévesque is a development worker, journalist and filmmaker. Originally from Montreal, Canada, Alexandra co-founded the non-profit organization Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) in 2002. She was awarded the Gordon Global Fellowship in 2006 which enabled her to produce her first documentary film, When Silence is Golden (2007), about the impact of Canadian mining interests on a small community in Ghana, West Africa. The film was awarded a honorable mention at the Pan Africa Film Festival in Montreal, and was screened in the US, the UK and across Canada. After working for nearly 3 years in Sudan, with the BBC World Service Trust and the United Nations peacekeeping mission, Alexandra produced and directed her second documentary film, The Longest Kiss (2013).