Melanistic Magazine - Vol. 11

SOUTH SUDAN: LOCAL TIME

In the fall of 2020, Edmonton Community Foundation (ECF) was approached by the city’s South Sudanese community for help.

At the time, 14 South Sudanese Edmontonians had died from causes exacerbated by COVID-19. That number has since grown to more than 30. Families were selling their homes to afford burial costs and ECF provided funding to help lay their loved ones to rest.

Sandro Silva - Filmmaker, Co-owner of Dona Ana Films & Multimedia.

“Deaths were indirectly related to COVID — due to overdosing, mental health and sucide,” Dr. Mawien Akot, a leader from the South Sudanese community explains. “People are not working, most don’t have life insurance so burials are done by the community putting resources together.”

The urgency of the community’s challenges inspired ECF to produce South Sudan Local Time, a three-part miniseries that aims to capture the experiences of the South Sudanese diaspora in Edmonton. The series was released on September 6th, 2022.

To do this, Sandro Silva and Oumar Salifou were recruited as co-directors, to bring this work to life.

“A big challenge was making sure that we were not telling one version of the story from the community; [we wanted] to show that lives are not dominated on certain issues or fixated on specific events,” Salifou says, about capturing the complexity of the South Sudanese peoples in Edmonton.

Oumar Salifou Host of Is this for Real? Podcast

“I’m grateful to be able to tell what I think is an important story and the community is really able to speak for themselves.” -Oumar Salifou

While loss from the pandemic started the relationship between ECF and theSouth Sudanese community, Silva says that the value of this project is theopportunity to make this underserviced group feel seen.

“As a Black refugee it’s a different experience and in talking to them they felt as though they didn’t exist,” Silva says. “They didn’t think anyone knew the suffering over the years. We get to share stories that have never been told otherwise.”

The process of capturing these stories has had the fortunate effect of bringing the South Sudanese community together. Dr. Mawien hopes that as they become more organized, and with the support of Albertans and organizations like ECF, the South Sudandese people will become more selfsufficient and impactful contributors to Edmonton’s diverse landscape.

To learn more visit www.ecfoundation.org