The Devil Came on Horseback

"Urgent and devastating. Demands to be seen as soon as possible and by as many viewers as possible."—Manohla Dargis, New York Times

An eyewitness report of urgent moral authority, The Devil Came on Horseback is the first-hand account of a former U. S. Marine captain, Brian Steidle, sent by the African Union to investigate the Sudanese government’s genocide of its own citizens living in the western Darfur region.

The title refers to the government’s Arab militias known as the janjaweed—“devil on horseback”—sent to brutally exterminate or displace hundreds of thousands of other Africans guilty only of being non-Arab. The film also traces Steidle’s desperate efforts to bring his video documentation of this incomprehensible mass slaughter to the American public, with Nicholas D. Kristof finally breaking the story in the New York Times in 2005.

The tragedy in the Sudan continues; in June of this year, Ohio’s Rep. Dennis Kucinich addressed it this way: “Let’s face it, if Darfur had a large supply of oil, this administration would be occupying it right now.” (85 mins.)

This film is screened in conjunction with the conference Toward a Transformative Agenda around Race, presented by Ohio State’s Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity from November 30 to December 2. The conference is preceded by a film festival from November 27 to December 1. Please visit kirwaninstitute.org for more information.

Watch the Trailer