And Here is War, Yet Again
When civil war strips an aspiring South Sudanese filmmaker of his dreams and destroys him family, he sets off on a desperate journey of self-discovery to understand who he is, how to survive and why people kill.
Set within an Ugandan refugee camp, And Here Is War, Yet Again is a short animated film collaboration between Richard Akim, a survivor of South Sudan's recurrent civil wars, and German Andino, a Honduran journalist and graphic artist. Weaving memories of his childhood and the violence that have defined his life into scenes from the present, the film illuminates the plight of a stateless, restless, ambitious young refugee who refuses to be defined by his trauma or his circumstances.
The considerable challenges of shooting a film in a refugee camp were exacerbated by travel restrictions and strict quarantine measures during the pandemic, not to mention the lack of access to electricity in Bidi Bidi. The limitations meant that Richard had to manage all aspects of visual production himself. He built his own tripod with pieces of wood he collected around the settlement and recorded scenes with his mobile phone, which became the primary visual references for future animation work. We modified the original script of the film on the fly, so Richard was responsible for recording the soundtrack, sound effects, and even his own narration of the film.
During the pandemic, the tasks Ray and I had intended to flesh out together in the field in Uganda turned into endless hours of Facebook Messenger meetings and shared WeTransfer files, all of which was aggravated by the limited bandwidth of Bidi Bidi's free internet network.
The first stage of production required gathering information and applying journalistic rigor in order to document Richard's story accurately. We had to locate the story in time and place his migratory process within the framework of the endless wars in South Sudan. His story was then condensed into a technical script, which was originally intended to become a non-fiction comic.
A journalistic approach to tell this story, let’s say a traditional one, would fall short of the suffering caused by the war in South Sudan. So Richard and I decided the film would offer that and more: slow journalism and art. Two transforming forces that when combined offer an enormity of perspective.
Award-winning Honduran animator and journalist who received the 2017 Gabriel García Márquez award for Latin American Journalism for his graphic novella "El Hábito de la Mordaza" ("The Habit of Silence"). He is founder of Bilbao Media Lab and co-producer of the Bidi Bidi Media Lab.
South Sudanese refugee producer, filmmaker, community activist and co-founder of Bidi Bidi Media Lab. Richard's work explores conflict, statelessness and life in northern Uganda’s refugee archipelago.
