About
Who we are
Founded in 2026 by Camilla Marchese, Yusef Bushara, and Paris Sistilli, Returning Sands is a kaleidoscopic arts-and-culture campaign focused on amplifying the fight for Sudan’s cultural heritage around the world. Working at the intersection of documentary filmmaking, public exhibition, and intercultural education, Returning Sands seeks to ensure that Sudanese heritage remains visible, accessible, and understood for generations to come. As a registered CIC, Returning Sands is entirely not-for-profit, and all funds generated are reinvested in the mission.
What we’re working toward
- 01Support the documentation of endangered Sudanese heritage and lived memory.
- 02Amplify the work of Sudanese heritage professionals, including the emerging work of Blue Shield Sudan.
- 03Collaborate with Sudanese artists and heritage experts to tackle the issue of futurity in an interdisciplinary fashion.
- 04Enable future pathways to rebuild, recover, and sustain Sudanese cultural heritage, within the country and across the diaspora.
- 05Position culture as a core component of humanitarian and conflict response.
Documentary
The film
From exile in Egypt, Ali Nour coordinates Sudan’s fight to keep its heritage alive. With national memory under siege, he and a network of displaced Sudanese experts run high-risk safeguarding operations across the country, facing collapsed infrastructure and limited international support. The film also enters the lives of Sudanese artists, musicians, and scholars in exile, where heritage is still being made and passed on. The film will screen at festivals across the SWANA region and internationally.
Ali Nour
Secretary General, Blue Shield Sudan
Ali is Secretary General of Blue Shield Sudan and rapporteur of the Emergency Response Committee under Sudan’s National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (NCAM).
A grants-management specialist, he supports regional and international efforts to document, stabilise, and protect heritage in Sudan.
“Beneath the wreckage of homes and hospitals lies another front in this war: the systematic erasure of a nation’s cultural memory.”
Director
Aicha Cherif
Director · 2026 Sundance x Adobe Ignite Fellow
“With Returning Sands I venture into thematics of memory and belonging, through my own experience with displacement.”
Oral history project
With the generous support of the British Council’s Cultural Protection Fund, our oral history project will follow upwards of 10 Sudanese artists in Cairo, documenting their experiences of exile, displacement, and cultural loss while collecting personal archives of photographs, documents, artworks, and objects. The archive will ultimately become a bilingual virtual museum, making Sudanese cultural memory accessible to audiences worldwide and preserving these stories and materials for future generations.
Collection and scanning of personal archives and photographs will also go beyond the artists highlighted, and will include personal heritage from the Sudanese community in Cairo and abroad, positioning civil society’s archives as key in post-conflict settings.