AKASHA New Auteurs

Premiering at the Venice International Film Festival, documentarian hajooj kuka’s attention-grabbing, narrative debut AKASHA is a delightfully offbeat comedy set in rebel-held Sudan, where fighting has stopped amid the rainy season. Eager to resume battle after the rain subsides, the army commander launches a “kasha” — an annual roundup and arrest of truant soldiers — surprising revolutionary hero Adnan in bed with his lover, Lina. Pitting man, woman and AK-47 against one another in a love triangle with comically catastrophic consequences, the following 24 hours will determine Adnan’s fate in life and love. A surprising follow-up to his award-winning documentary BEATS OF ANTONOV, kuka’s playfully subversive look at the Sudanese civil war defies narrative norms. – Malin Kan