News Award – Finalist
Sara Creta
Journey to Darfur
Commissioned by: Channel 4 News
The city of El Geneina was besieged by the Rapid Support Forces last year. They took full control of the city in November. Human rights groups have detailed countless atrocities – while the UN estimates up to 15,000 people were killed.
The RSF have not given journalists any access to the area which they control – until now. Filmmaker Sara Creta was given rare permission to travel to El Geneina to see what has become of the city.
Much like the conflict in Myanmar, the brutal fighting in Sudan remains one of the most chronically under-reported world conflicts. Through Sara’s deep, searing reporting, Channel 4 News has brought vital insight to international audiences that has kept the crisis squarely on the international agenda.
This brave and vital reporting now stands amongst the most definitive pieces of foreign reportage from this embattled corner of northeast Africa.
“Filmmaker Sara Creta takes us on a journey into dangerous territory, travelling on an embed with the Rapid Support Forces, themselves the perpetrators of killing and destruction. To negotiate this access and to travel with the RSF took courage, deep experience and technical skill; she kept her cool, filming the context around the set pieces they wanted her to see. The scenes of chaos, the heavily armed RSF guard – these sequences conveyed the real tragedy unfolding in Darfur. At great personal risk she covered an under-reported story which threatens famine and further violence, bringing it to a global audience at a critical time.“
News Award Jury
Bio
Sara Creta is a documentary filmmaker who, for the past ten years, has documented humanitarian crises and investigated some of the world’s most urgent human rights issues. Travelling to the most remote corners of the globe, she has captured not only war and injustice but also humanity, dignity, and resilience. Her work has been published in The New York Times, BBC, Channel 4, ARTE, and ZDF, and her documentaries have been selected and awarded at numerous festivals in Europe and abroad.
Her feature documentary Libya, No Escape From Hell has been nominated for the Albert Londres Prize, the highest French journalistic distinction. Before working independently, she filmed and documented violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Rohingya genocide in Bangladesh, the suspended lives of those displaced by Boko Haram around Lake Chad, and search and rescue operations in the central Mediterranean for Doctors Without Borders.