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In this week’s episode of the Black Girl Nerds podcast, we have a 2-part episode about all things Sundance 2025.
Segment 1: We chat with directors: Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy and Timeea M. Ahmed about their documentary film Khartoum that screened at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Forced to leave Sudan for East Africa following the outbreak of war, five citizens of Khartoum — a civil servant, a tea lady, a resistance committee volunteer, and two young bottle collectors — reenact their stories of survival and freedom through dreams, revolution, and civil war.
Segment 2: Travis Hopson, of Punch Drunk Critics, joins us to chat about the films we loved and didn’t love at Sundance 2025. This was recorded during the middle of festival, so not all films were screened at the time of the discussion.
Music by: Sammus
Edited by: Jamie Broadnax
The post PODCAST: Filmmakers of ‘Khartoum’ and the Films We Loved and Didn’t Love at Sundance 2025 appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.
Lauren Kate’s popular YA fantasy novel, Fallen, first fit the shelves in 2009 and was subsequently followed by sequels Torment (2010), Passion (2011), Fallen In Love (2012), Rapture (2012), and Unforgiven (2015).
Due to its wild success with young readers, the first novel was adapted into a film in 2016. Yet, it wasn’t a lucrative release, earning only 7% on Rotten Tomatoes and no further production of the rest of the series. If I’m honest, the 2016 adaptation wasn’t the best adaptation any fan would hope for.
While the Department of Education under the Trump administration claims book bans are a “hoax,” this does not erase the experience of authors like Samira Ahmed, who have been dealing with and fighting book bans for years.
Ahmed is the bestselling author of several young adult novels, including Internment, Hollow Fires, and This Book Won’t Burn. Through her writing career, she has worked to remedy an issue she noticed in childhood: a lack of books featuring South Asian and Muslim representation. In addition to allowing children to see themselves reflected in literature, her books tackle very relevant themes, including racism, Islamaphobia, and police brutality. Unfortunately, her books have been the target of the growing conservative book ban movement. While these book banners claim to be banning books that are “pornographic,” some of Ahmed’s books have been banned for no reason other than featuring a Muslim American protagonist. Many have also been “soft-banned” through unofficial processes that are harder to track or combat.