Preview Screening: We Were Rebels + Q&A

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Florian Schewe.

We Were Rebels tells the story of Agel, a former child soldier who returns to South Sudan to help build his country. The film accompanies him over a period of two years – from South Sudan gaining its independence in 2011 to the renewed outbreak of civil war in December 2013.

As a child soldier, Agel was taught to kill and lost almost all of his male relatives to violence. Later he managed to flee via Kenya to Australia, where he became a professional basketball player and returned to South Sudan a free man. As the captain of the national basketball team, he coaches his fellow teammates through their very first international match against Uganda. The conflicts within the team bear a striking resemblance to the political problems festering across the country.

When an injury forces Agel to leave the basketball team, he goes on to form an NGO that provides the country’s most remote areas with clean drinking water. His journeys give him time to reflect on his country – on how it was, how it is, and how he hopes it will be one day. Today, four years after gaining its independence, the world’s youngest nation is once again teetering on the edge of a precipice, as more than half a million people are fleeing the country. Agel faces the possibility of fighting as a soldier once again.

Directed by Katharina von Schroeder and Florian Schewe
Duration: 92′
Year: 2014