Don Cheadle, Danny Glover talk Darfur Now :: Film & TV News :: Articles

[Above: Don Cheadle]

Darfur Now, a documentary by Ted Braun and featuring actor-turned-activist Don Cheadle debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival this past weekend. Cheadle and Braun were on hand, along with two of the film’s other subjects—Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court in the Hague, and Adam Sterling, a 24-year-old UCLA grad who founded a grassroots organization to pressure international businesses to divest in The Sudan through legislation.

What makes the film unique is its approach to the subject matter, profiling six people doing what they can to make a difference. “[When I looked at what was happening in Darfur], what I found shocked me,” said Braun, “both the nature and magnitude of the crimes and the world’s indifference. I wanted to make a film that would reach a wide audience, and I thought the best way was to look at the conflict from many points of view and one that gave people hope—put them in the shoes of people who could make a difference.”

One of those people was Cheadle, who had to look at the reality of genocide head-on while filming 2004’s Hotel Rwanda. He later traveled to The Sudan at the request of a congressman. “Once I’d seen it with my own eyes,” he said, “it was impossible to come back and do nothing. I came back, took stock and thought, ‘Where do I have influence?’ And then I realized, ‘Oh, I’m an actor.’ I go on red carpets and people ask me questions like what does Brad [Pitt] eat. And I say, 'anything,' and then I get to go into my thing.”

Producer Mark Jonathan Harris added, “I made two Academy Award-winning documentaries on the Holocaust. The Holocaust Museum gets two million visitors each year, making it the most visited museum in the country. The lesson people take from that is, ‘Never Again,’ but I think people don’t make the connection between what happened 60 years ago to what’s happening now in Africa.”

Danny Glover, who has two films at TIFF this year, also had an opinion on the subject. “I think we have to really learn from past movements,” he said. “If you look at the anti-Apartheid movement, there was a grassroots movement. If you look at the Civil Rights movement, you see how powerful of a role culture played. This is a unique situation in that people are responding to a film about what’s still happening. There are six or seven other major conflicts in Africa, and we have to find ways of engaging those who are decision makers.”

The film opens Nov. 2.

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