Cotton Queen review – mystery, matriarchs and magic in pioneering Sudanese debut

Suzannah Mirghani’s first feature contains a powerful performance by Rabha Mohamed Mahmoud as a village’s elder woman and tackles the long shadow of British imperialism and women’s rights ‘I decide my past,” says a village matriarch in this intriguingly political and poetic drama from Suzannah Mirghani, making her feature debut – and with it becoming the first Sudanese woman to direct a feature. (She was forced to cancel the original shoot in Sudan when war broke out in 2023 , moving production