How does it feel to engage with a national uprising beyond the territorial borders of the nation? What connects you? What impedes connection? Perhaps most importantly, what is at stake? Grappling with questions like this shaped Bentley Brown’s new film Revolution from Afar. The film explores how young Sudanese-American artists are navigating their relationship to Sudan, the multiple ways one might articulate a “Sudanese-American” position, and how both of these challenges relate to Sudan’s still ongoing political transition. In doing so, it wrestles with the complexities of engaging, as artists, in a conflictual relationship to the state. It also grapples with how today’s revolution fits into the longer narrative of Sudan’s political history. The artists’ reflections on these issues highlight new ideas about identity, diaspora, and third culture taking shape from afar. I had the opportunity to recently engage with Bentley about the film.