Hot Docs 2009

"I'm afraid that we will be hearing about Sudan for a long time to come." These are the hauntingly predictive words former US Marine Captain Brian Steidle wrote in a letter home in 2004 while monitoring a ceasefire in the Darfur region of Western Sudan. Armed only with a camera, pen and paper, Steidle joins the African Union as a military observer in the heart of the conflicts, in an area inaccessible to journalists. There he directly witnesses and documents the brutal, systematic annihilation of black African Sudanese by the Arab militia group, the Janjaweed. Certain that if only the West knew of these atrocities they would be compelled to act, Steidle returns home to America with over a thousand explicit photographs and begins an impassioned awareness campaign. The Devil Came on Horseback is a deeply affecting story of one man's life-changing transition from witness to activist and comes as a pressing reminder that the Darfur genocide, which has claimed nearly half a million lives, continues to this day.