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On the Wheat Trap
The documentary film, Wheat Trap, directed by Mohamed Fawi and produced by Al Araby TV, follows the lives of several farmers and their families in Al-Komor Al-Jaaliyin village, part of the Gezira agricultural scheme in central Sudan.
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The documentary film, Wheat Trap, directed by Mohamed Fawi and produced by Al Araby TV, follows the lives of several farmers and their families in Al-Komor Al-Jaaliyin village, part of the Gezira agricultural scheme in central Sudan. The film was shot against the backdrop of worsening economic conditions compounded by fuel and bread shortages and political instability. Also depicted in the film are the anti-government protests culminating in the 2019 revolution that deposed Omar al-Bashir, sparked by a protest in Atbara over increasing bread prices.
Wheat Trap’s central theme is to question how and why the Sudanese have turned away from traditional foods such as kisra and asida made from sorghum and millet, to bread loaves made of wheat. References are often made to the importance of traditional foods in the past. It is peppered with anecdotes such as how young women in the past were only deemed eligible for marriage when they were able to make a large stack of good quality kisra and today, only the older women of the village continue the custom. ‘I wake up early in the morning, even if it is at 6 am to make kisra and I tell him if you don’t eat, I won’t let you go out’ says one woman about her husband as she sits near a the hot saj plate pouring a ladle of kisra batter over it.
Over lunch and a freshly made stack of kisra and steaming stew, the men discuss the reasons why they think people have increasingly turned away from the ‘simple’ life of the past in favour of wheat and bread. One farmer says free grants of wheat and other basic commodities by the US AID department in the late 1950s, sent ‘as a token of friendship’, meant the appetite for bread loaves made of wheat spread to rural areas. This social transformation of society’s preference towards wheat, is a tool of ‘modern colonisation’ the farmer affirms. The trap in the film’s title describes the habit of consumption that developed as a result of the free wheat and the loss of appetite for traditional grains such as sorghum and millet.
Another farmer explains how changing lifestyles, with girls and women choosing to continue their education and have careers, means they no longer have the time to prepare and make kisra and asida for every meal. Instead, it is much easier to buy ready-made bread from bakeries while new products such as pizzas and pastries, made of wheat, are also very popular. Farmers themselves it is explained, turned to cash-crops with the example of the yield for two acres of onions being more lucrative than planting the unpopular sorghum.
Since the free imports of the past, commercial imports of wheat have been constantly rising particularly as Sudan’s climate is less suitable to wheat growing as it is for sorghum. Sudanese governments have therefore always found themselves in a position of trying to maintain affordable prices through ever-increasing subsidies. In the film, farmers on the Gezira project are gradually turning to growing wheat as a more lucrative product but Sudan still imports around sixty percent of its wheat needs.
Threads running through the film are concluded in the final scenes. While the wheat harvest has been generous and has allowed one farmer to finally marry his fiancé, protesters at the sit-in site at the army HQ during the revolution refuse to accept donations offered by foreign countries to support the encampment. A closing shot states that the first form of aid supplied by the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to the military council, which took over after Al-Bashir was deposed, consisted of wheat.
The gallery show's stills from the film Wheat Trap, all rights reserved for Mohamed Fawi
The documentary film, Wheat Trap, directed by Mohamed Fawi and produced by Al Araby TV, follows the lives of several farmers and their families in Al-Komor Al-Jaaliyin village, part of the Gezira agricultural scheme in central Sudan. The film was shot against the backdrop of worsening economic conditions compounded by fuel and bread shortages and political instability. Also depicted in the film are the anti-government protests culminating in the 2019 revolution that deposed Omar al-Bashir, sparked by a protest in Atbara over increasing bread prices.
Wheat Trap’s central theme is to question how and why the Sudanese have turned away from traditional foods such as kisra and asida made from sorghum and millet, to bread loaves made of wheat. References are often made to the importance of traditional foods in the past. It is peppered with anecdotes such as how young women in the past were only deemed eligible for marriage when they were able to make a large stack of good quality kisra and today, only the older women of the village continue the custom. ‘I wake up early in the morning, even if it is at 6 am to make kisra and I tell him if you don’t eat, I won’t let you go out’ says one woman about her husband as she sits near a the hot saj plate pouring a ladle of kisra batter over it.
Over lunch and a freshly made stack of kisra and steaming stew, the men discuss the reasons why they think people have increasingly turned away from the ‘simple’ life of the past in favour of wheat and bread. One farmer says free grants of wheat and other basic commodities by the US AID department in the late 1950s, sent ‘as a token of friendship’, meant the appetite for bread loaves made of wheat spread to rural areas. This social transformation of society’s preference towards wheat, is a tool of ‘modern colonisation’ the farmer affirms. The trap in the film’s title describes the habit of consumption that developed as a result of the free wheat and the loss of appetite for traditional grains such as sorghum and millet.
Another farmer explains how changing lifestyles, with girls and women choosing to continue their education and have careers, means they no longer have the time to prepare and make kisra and asida for every meal. Instead, it is much easier to buy ready-made bread from bakeries while new products such as pizzas and pastries, made of wheat, are also very popular. Farmers themselves it is explained, turned to cash-crops with the example of the yield for two acres of onions being more lucrative than planting the unpopular sorghum.
Since the free imports of the past, commercial imports of wheat have been constantly rising particularly as Sudan’s climate is less suitable to wheat growing as it is for sorghum. Sudanese governments have therefore always found themselves in a position of trying to maintain affordable prices through ever-increasing subsidies. In the film, farmers on the Gezira project are gradually turning to growing wheat as a more lucrative product but Sudan still imports around sixty percent of its wheat needs.
Threads running through the film are concluded in the final scenes. While the wheat harvest has been generous and has allowed one farmer to finally marry his fiancé, protesters at the sit-in site at the army HQ during the revolution refuse to accept donations offered by foreign countries to support the encampment. A closing shot states that the first form of aid supplied by the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to the military council, which took over after Al-Bashir was deposed, consisted of wheat.
The gallery show's stills from the film Wheat Trap, all rights reserved for Mohamed Fawi
