Virtual Voice

An arranged marriage in a cotton-farming village in Sudan. Does 15-year-old Nafisa have a choice?

In a cotton-farming village in Sudan, teenage Nafisa is raised on heroic tales of battling British colonizers told by her grandmother, the village matriarch Al-Sit. But when a young businessman arrives from abroad with a new development plan and genetically engineered cotton, Nafisa becomes the center of a power play to determine the future of the village. Awakening to her own strength, Nafisa sets out to save the cotton fields – and herself. Neither she nor her community will ever be the same again.

Set in a Doha traffic jam, this film narrates the stream of consciousness flowing through a cross-section of Qatari society as they meditate on their lives.

In a tangled landscape of dream and reality, Hind recounts a strange dream about wandering alone in the desert, meeting an old oracle, and glimpsing a future desert city.

This artist profile of Kamala Ibrahim Ishag was commissioned by the Serpentine Galleries to accompany an exhibition titled "Kamala Ibrahim Ishag: States of Oneness," on display at the Serpentine South Gallery on October 7, 2022-January 29, 2023 to celebrate the pioneering Sudanese artist Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, whose work intertwines the earthly and the spiritual through an understanding of our connections with the natural world. With a career spanning over sixty years, Kamala Ibrahim Ishag (b.1939) is a defining figure of modern and contemporary art. Her widely recognised paintings, where often human and plant forms intertwine, use a distinctive palette rooted in the colours of the sun, sand and sky and contemplate the cyclical flow of life and the intangible aspects of women’s lives in Sudan.

This film is an experimental reflection on the automation and alienation underlying the city of Doha.