Main Cast: Nicholas Kirstof, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, John Prendergast, Gretchen Wallace, Brian Steidle
Release Year: 2007
Country: US
Run Time: 85 minutes
Plot
In late 2006, former U.S. Marine captain Brian Steidle traveled to Darfur, Sudan, with the African Union peacekeeping force -- and found his life and perspective on the world forever changed. Devastated and racked with horror by the Janjaweed-driven genocide in the western region of the country (which has claimed 400,000 lives), Steidle set out to work against these atrocities -- atrocities systematically denied and publicly buried by the corrupt Sudanese government. Despite his initial hesitancies, Steidle ultimately agreed to plunge headfirst into the conflict -- and to work toward achieving social change not through violence but through peaceful, humanitarian efforts. His efforts carried him to a myriad of countries and multiple continents; throughout, Steidle took over 1,000 photographs to document the horrors, thus spreading awareness of this crisis to the remainder of the world and roundly defeating Sudanese governmental denials of the genocide. In their nonfiction work The Devil Came on Horseback, documentarians Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg bring viewers along with Steidle on his intensely moving personal journey, and shed light on a region of the world rapidly plunging into its own inescapable hell. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
Cast
Brian Steidle
Elie Wiesel; Gretchen Wallace; Nicholas Kirstof; John Prendergast; Luis Moreno-Ocampo; Barack Obama
Credit
Jed Alpert - Associate Producer, Ted Greenberg - Associate Producer, Seth Keal - Associate Producer, Ricki Stern - Director, Annie Sundberg - Director, Joey Grossfield - Editor, Paul Brill - Composer (Music Score), William Rexer II - Cinematographer, Phil Cox - Cinematographer, Tim Hetherington - Cinematographer, Jerry Risius - Cinematographer, Annie Sundberg - Cinematographer, John Keith Wasson - Cinematographer, Katie Brown - Production Manager, Ricki Stern - Producer, Annie Sundberg - Producer, Gretchen Wallace - Producer, Jane Wells - Producer, Ira Lechner - Producer, Eileen Haag - Producer, Cristina Ljungberg - Producer, Brad Bergbom - Sound/Sound Designer, Rusty Dunn - Sound/Sound Designer, Tom Efinger - Sound Director, Kristin Rodriguez - First Assistant Editor, Yorgo Alexopoulos - Visual Effects
The Devil Came on Horseback is a documentary film by Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg illustrating the continuing Darfur Conflict in Sudan. Based on the book by former U.S. MarineCaptainBrian Steidle and his experiences while working as an unarmed military observer for the African Union, the film version had its premiere at film festivals in early and mid-2007. This documentary is a Break Thru Films production in association with Global Grassroots and 3 Generations.
The award-winning film premiered at Sundance 07, was screened at the Laemmle Music Hall on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles in June 2007 and opened its nationwide release at the IFC New York in July 2007. The film won the Working Films Award at the 2007 Full Frame Documentary Festival. The film asks viewers to become educated about the on-going genocide in Darfur and laments the failure of the US and others to end this crisis.
Book
The book version by Brian Steidle with his sister, Gretchen Steidle Wallace.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir
In March 2009 the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan's western Darfur region, where U.N. officials say as many as 300,000 people have died since the conflict erupted in 2003. Source Reuters
