The documentary film WE WERE REBELS tells the story of Agel, a former child soldier who returns to South Sudan to help build up his country. The film accompanies him over a period of two years – from South Sudan gaining its independence in 2011 to the renewed outbreak of civil war in December 2013.

As captain of the national basketball team of South Sudan – the youngest country in the world – Agel coaches the team through their very first international match against Uganda. The conflicts within the team bear a striking resemblance to the political problems festering across the country. An injury ends up forcing Agel to leave the basketball team, and he goes on to form an NGO that provides the country’s most remote areas with clean drinking water. His journeys give him time to reflect on his country – on how it was, how it is, and how he hopes it will be one day. As a child soldier, Agel had to kill and also lost almost all of his male relatives. Later he managed to flee via Kenya to Australia, where he became a professional basketball player and returned to South Sudan a free man.

Today, just two years after gaining its independence, the world’s youngest nation is once again teetering on the edge of a precipice: More than half a million people are fleeing the country, and Agel is fighting as a soldier once again.

 

 

Author: Christoph Hubertus Lumpe, Katharina von Schroeder

Director: Katharina von Schroeder, Florian Schewe

Editor: André Nier

Production: Perfect Shot Films, ZDF Kleines Fernsehspiel

Sponsor: German Foreign Office, Misereor, Heinrich Böll Foundation, Camelot

 

 

Awards: Grimme Award / Grimme Preis 2015

Nominated for the German Documentary Film Award 2015 / Deutscher Dokumentarfilmpreis 2015

 

 

Festivals:

 

Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Nairobi, Kenia Nov 18th, 2015

 

Films from the South Festival, Oslo, Norway Oct 8th - 18th, 2015

 

Budapest International Documentary Festival, Hungary Sep 23rd - 27th, 2015

 

Sole Luna Treviso Doc Film Festival, Italy International Competition Sep 14th - 20th, 2015

 

Ciné Droit Libre, Abidjan, Ivory Coast Sep 14th - 19th, 2015

 

Brooklyn Film Festival, New York, USA May 29th - June 7th, 2015

 

Input TV - television in the public interest, Tokyo, Japan May 11 - 14th, 2015

 

Nashville Film Festival, USA April 16th - 25th, 2015

 

Days of European Film, Prague, Czech Republic April 16th, 2015

 

Human Rights Human Wrongs Documentary Film Festival, Oslo, Norway February 10th - 15th, 2015

 

DocPoint, Helsinki Documentary Film Festival, Helsinki, Finland January 27th - February 1st, 2015

 

Escales Documentaires de Libreville, Libreville, Gabon December 1-7, 2014

 

International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), The Netherlands November 19-30, 2014

 

Leipzig Screening (DOK Leipzig), Germany October 27th, 2014

 

Montreal World Film Festival, Canada August 21st - September 1st, 2014

 

iREP Monthly Documentary Film Screening, Lagos, Nigeria August 23rd, 2014

 

Ecrans Noirs, Yaoundé, Cameroon July 19th-26th, 2014

 

Rwanda Film Festival, Kigali, Rwanda Screening: July 13th, 2014

 

International Documentary Film Festival Munich, Germany Screening: May 8th & 11th, 2014

 

 

Screenings:

 

Goethe Institut Addis Abeba, Ethiopia Nov 12th, 2015

 

23. Fernsehworkshop Entwicklungspolitik, Televison Workshop Development Politics, Frankfurt, Germany June 11-14th, 2015

 

28th Sudan and South Sudan Conference, Germany June 10-12th, 2015

 

The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London The London Confernce 2015 June 1-2nd, 2015

 

Essenheimer Kunstverein, Germany May 28th, 2015

 

Frontline Club, London April 10th, 2015

 

LSE - London School of Economics and Political Science December 2014

 

Humanitarian Congress Berlin, Germany October 9th, 2014, 8 pm at "Filmtheater am Friedrichshain"

 

Berlin premiere: June 25th, 2014, 6 pm at "Filmtheater am Friedrichshain"

 

German TV: July 14th, 2014 on ZDF: "Wir waren Rebellen - Krieg und Frieden im Südsudan"