Preview Screening: The Longest Kiss + Q&A

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Alexandra Sicotte-Levesque and James Copnall, author of A Poisonous Thorn in our Hearts – Sudan and South Sudan’s Bitter and Incomplete Divorce.

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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, straddled between the Middle East and Africa, was about to split in two.

Facing conflicting identities, the youth in north Sudan are faced with a stale leadership while others in south Sudan hope to start over. Focusing on the stories of six people searching for a place to call ‘home’ ahead of the south’s secession, director Alexandra Sicotte-Levesque paints an intimate and detailed portrait of the country’s complex fragmentation.

James Copnall was the BBC Sudan correspondent from 2009-12, covering South Sudan’s independence, the Darfur war, rebellions, and clashes between the Sudans. He has reported from over twenty African countries. His book A Poisonous Thorn in our Hearts – Sudan and South Sudan’s Bitter and Incomplete Divorce is due for publication on 5 March.

Alexandra Sicotte-Levesque worked as a radio producer for the United Nations radio in Sudan (Radio Miraya) and was the country director for the BBC World Service Trust in Sudan. In her first feature documentary, When Silence is Golden she followed the gold mining activities of a Canadian mining company near a small town in Western Ghana.