Darfur Is Too Big for One Film

At one point in the new documentary “Darfur Now,” Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), bluntly observes that it isn’t monsters who commit mass atrocities, but bureaucracies. Having cut his teeth on prosecuting once-powerful generals in his native Argentina, however, he is sure he will be able to trace destruction wrought by the janjaweed militia back to the Sudanese government and bring the orchestrators of the genocide to justice. But his job is complicated by the fact that the United Nations cannot guarantee protection for witnesses in Darfur, thereby forcing him to hunch over a computer, poring over satellite images of torched villages in western Sudan and sighing in frustration at journalists who don’t understand why the process is taking so long.

However, Moreno-Ocampo’s resolve pays off in the form of two arrest warrants, one for a high-ranking Sudanese minister and another for a janjaweed commander. It is only one of the emotional victories depicted in “Darfur Now,” written and directed by long-time documentarian Ted Braun, and Moreno-Ocampo is only one of six protagonists. What the documentary makes clear is that the present-day story of Darfur is not just the familiar one of death, destruction and displacement, but also of the humble work to resist evil and a spirit of human commonality.

Statistically, Darfur is a nightmare. As of this year, according to the U.N., 200,000 people have died from the conflict and 2.5 million have become refugees. “Darfur Now” doesn’t provide answers to the problem, nor does it examine the complexity of the rebel movement or other ambiguous aspects of the conflict in detail, but it is a dramatically compelling, whole-hearted endorsement of those who are working to improve the situation, whether from behind a desk or out on the front lines. At times, however, it feels like the film is juggling one or two too many stories in its attempt to convey breadth, at the expense of fleshing out all of them.

Regardless, the film’s breadth is impressive. The other subjects include a student activist, an actor turned diplomat, a humanitarian worker praying his convoy doesn’t get ambushed, a sheik trying to hold together an unhappy displacement camp and a woman rebel fighter who takes up arms after her only child is killed by the janjaweed. The activists are motivated by a more indirect connection to past genocides, like having relatives who died in the Holocaust. All of the characters, however, are driven by an overwhelming conviction that it would be impossible for them not to do something to help, and to do so would be to abdicate a profound responsibility to humanity.

Unfortunately, it seems that much of the rest of humanity has abdicated its responsibility to Darfur. When Don Cheadle and his friend George Clooney go on a diplomatic jaunt to China and Egypt, two of Sudan’s most important allies, he notes they are the highest level delegation from the United States to go to Egypt to discuss Darfur. By leveraging their celebrity, they are hoping that they can raise awareness of the genocide to the level where Americans would only be able to say, “I either acted or I stood by.” They may be on their way to that ambitious goal—a poll from earlier this year shows 64 percent of Americans believe Darfur should be a foreign policy priority for the U.S., and presidential candidates now feel obligated to talk about possible intervention strategies. “Darfur Now” can only heighten that awareness.