Darfur Now

Despite impeccable intentions and a cast of compelling real-life characters, "Darfur Now" may more accurately be titled "Darfur Then," as events in that much-abused region of Sudan have overtaken those depicted in even this of-the-moment documentary.

Made by Ted Braun, "Darfur Now" draws with clarity and an urgent sense of drama the conflicts that have cost hundreds of thousands of lives and created millions of refugees in Darfur, and it chronicles the efforts of an international cadre of activists to stop the killing. Through the eyes of actor Don Cheadle (see story on Page 33), international prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, relief worker Pablo Recalde and student activist Adam Sterling, as well as a Sudanese rebel named Hejewa Adam, Braun cogently demonstrates how a cruel matrix of dictatorship, racism, geopolitics, environmental destruction and apathy have created a genocide and, perhaps most important for American audiences, what citizens can do. (Sterling has run a successful campaign to force the state of California to divest from Sudanese investments.)

With its largely sympathetic portrayal of Sudanese rebels fighting Arab militias, "Darfur Now" doesn't reflect how the rebels themselves have split into murderous rival factions, sending the humanitarian crisis into an even more desperate and seemingly intractable cycle. But it still provides context and an invaluable human face to a story that too many Westerners perceive as distant or irrelevant, if they perceive it at all. See "Darfur Now," and you won't read the daily news the same way again.

-- Ann Hornaday (Nov. 9, 2007)

Contains thematic material involving crimes against humanity.