Returning Sands is an upcoming documentary and cultural impact project dedicated to preserving and sharing Sudanese cultural heritage threatened by ongoing armed conflict and displacement.
The Sudanese cultural heritage campaign was founded by heritage and creative professionals, including American investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Paris Quetzal Sistilli, Sudanese-Bermudian editor, writer and researcher Yusef Bushara, and Guatemalan-Italian writer and filmmaker Camilla Marchese Gonzalez.
Since the outbreak of war in April 2023, Sudan has witnessed widespread and devastating damage to archaeological sites, archives, museums, and other sites of cultural significance. An estimated 60% of the Sudan National Museum’s holdings have been looted, while more than 12 million people have been displaced. In times of conflict, cultural heritage is not only a record of the past. It is a tangible expression of identity, and can become a target in the struggle over a people’s present and future.
The co-founders write, “Platforming Sudanese cultural heritage must be done in tandem with real efforts to give Sudanese creatives and thinkers the stage to show how their connection to place has evolved since the outbreak of the war in 2023 – from the people whose stories we are telling to the artists and thinkers shaping its public programme. We want to create a space where Sudanese people can speak to the complexity of what it means to inherit, protect, lose, and reimagine a connection to Sudan at this particular moment and for posterity.”
An entirely not-for-profit initiative, Returning Sands seeks to ensure that Sudanese heritage remains visible, accessible, and understood by audiences around the world. Through documentary filmmaking, public exhibition, archival material, and intercultural education, the project and organisation brings Sudanese heritage and those working to protect it to the fore. Public programming will begin in the fall of 2026.
At the heart of the project is an eponymous short documentary following Ali Nour, Secretary General of Blue Shield Sudan, who left his position at the British Council in 2023 to work full-time, on a voluntary basis, coordinating high-risk cultural heritage safeguarding operations across Sudan from exile in Cairo.
The film enters Ali’s interior life, but its story extends beyond him. It extends to bring together the perspectives of Sudanese artists, scholars, heritage professionals, and others living in exile, asking what it means to protect heritage when the places to which that heritage belongs are under threat. In doing so, Returning Sands approaches cultural heritage not as something static or belonging solely to the past, but as a living and democratic force, central to identity, survival, repatriation, and the possibility of Sudan’s future.
The documentary will be shot in spring 2027 and is directed by Aicha Cherif, a NYC-based producer, director and editor, and 2026 Sundance x Adobe Ignite Fellow.
Alongside the film, its public programming campaign – across New York, London and Cairo – has something on offer for everyone. It aims to raise funds for the documentary’s production while creating spaces for audiences to encounter Sudanese cultural heritage.
The project has already established partnerships with the British Council, the American University in Cairo, Al-Bait Baitkoum, alongside a growing network of organisations and individuals committed to keeping Sudanese heritage alive.
Returning Sands believes that preserving heritage is not only about safeguarding what has been left behind. It is about preserving the ability of a people to recognise themselves, tell their own histories, and imagine a return.
For more information or to support the project, visit https://returningsands.org or find them on social media at @ReturningSands.
