SKULKESKOLEN
Khartoum (2025) — screening and fundraiser + Q&A with Abdalla Eltayeb, Rawia Alhag, Lokain and Wilson
20:00
Part of SKULKESKOLEN, 2–6 September 2026
This is a fundraiser
100% of proceeds go to Space Black’s Sudan aid fund. If you can’t attend but would like to contribute, donate via Bergen Kunsthall’s Vipps: #806376.
For the final evening of SKULKESKOLEN, Bergen Kunsthall screens Khartoum (2025, 80 mins). Filmed on location with iPhones by four emerging Sudanese filmmakers — Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Brahim Snoopy and Timeea M. Ahmed — the film follows five residents of Khartoum as they search for survival and liberation in a city at war. Twelve-year-old Lokain and his best friend Wilson embark on a mission in Khartoum’s rubbish dumps to buy two beautiful shirts. Khadmallah, a single mother and tea vendor, serves her daily clientele cardamom coffee and gossip while studying mathematics to realise her dream of starting a business. Jawad, a Sufi Rastafarian resistance volunteer, rides a motorcycle and protests for a civilian government against the military, and civil servant Majdi escapes office life by racing pigeons with his son.
When filming began, war broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces militia, displacing over ten million people. The filmmakers and participants fled to East Africa mid-production, where they developed new ways of continuing the film from exile. Combining green screen reconstruction, restaging, and animation, Khartoum becomes both a record of displacement and an act of collective cinematic resistance.
The film will be presented by artist and geographer Abdalla Eltayeb. A conversation with one of the filmmakers, Rawia Alhag, follows the screening, together with the two best friends on screen, Lokain and Wilson. They join online from Nairobi, where Alhag has lived in exile since the war began.
The fundraiser
This event is organised to raise funds for Sudan. 100% of the proceeds go to Space Black, a London-based design studio that explores alternative spatial futures for marginalised communities. If you cannot come to the screening but still want to contribute, you can donate via Bergen Kunsthall’s Vipps on #806376.
Space Black is a British Sudanese team whose communities are directly impacted by the violence that has erupted in Sudan since clashes broke out in April 2023 between the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces. Despite calls for ceasefires, heavy fighting has continued across the country with civilians caught in the crossfire. Space Black works directly with Randa Osman, an aid worker who runs the organisation Droup Alkair (Path of Goodness). Randa and her team of volunteers have been working on the ground for over five years to support families registered with the organisation according to their specific needs. The fundraiser covers medical bills and helps families pay rent, school fees, school uniforms and food banks.
Biographies
Rawia Alhag is a Sudanese filmmaker and screenwriter now based in Nairobi, Kenya. Her work focuses on women’s and children’s issues, shedding light on the experiences and struggles of Sudanese people both within their communities and in the diaspora. She directed the award-winning short film Out of Coverage, which won Best Foreign Film at the Juba Film Festival.
Lokain and Wilson are best friends aged 11 and 13, who appear in Khartoum. They now live in Nairobi, Kenya, with the filmmaker Rawia Alhag, where they play football together and hope to one day join the Sudanese national team.
Abdalla Eltayeb is a cartographer, printmaker, and researcher based in Malmö. Working at the intersection of geospatial analysis and artistic practice, his work explores alternative forms of mapping rooted in memory, displacement, and Sudanese histories. Trained in GIS and daily engaged with maps in professional contexts, he is equally invested in challenging the authority of maps through imagining other forms of mapping. His recent projects use printmaking, archival fragments, and storytelling to trace erased journeys and to imagine otherwise geographies.
Also part of SKULKESKOLEN
Sunday 6 Sept: Ase Brunborg Lie hike · The Fifth Fire · Hanni Kamaly workshop
Credits
The first edition of SKULKESKOLEN is co-curated by Jade Meili Barget and Nora O’ Murchú and developed in partnership with the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at the University of Limerick in Ireland. The programme is generously supported by Culture Ireland, as part of Cultúr 2026: Sharing Ireland’s Culture, the culture programme for Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2026, Fritt Ord, KORO, Kulturrådet/Arts Council Norway, Mondriaan Fund and Sparebanken Norge.
Design: Minami Shimakage.
