I watched the Darfur doc The Devil Came on Horseback at the Harvard Exit again last night. It’s devastating. Aside from the gut-clenching photographs, the best sequence in the documentary is an interview with a highly educated survivor living in a refugee camp, who, in his careful English, delivers an impassioned thank-you to the government—here he corrects himself—to the people of the United States for the food and supplies their camp has received. It’s the most understated, worthwhile guilt trip I’ve ever been subject to. The entire audience was choking back tears.

Filmmakers Annie Sundberg (who was in attendance, along with subject/witness Brian Steidle, who took the above photograph) and Ricki Stern are basically self-distributing the film, but Annie assured us they’d bring it back to Seattle sometime in the late summer.

After the movie Annie and Brian and some old and new friends (the “new” category included a pirate computer-game programmer who met Brian at Folklife this weekend and Iraq in Fragments director James Longley) headed to Cafe Septieme for drinks and dinner. Annie, who is of Swedish extraction, may look hardcore and distant in her headshot, but she’s not above discussing the merits of pet health insurance or evangelizing the bicycle as a means of urban transport. She told one adorable story about locking her bike (vintage women’s Robin Hood, blue with sparkly blue grips) up to a similar one (brown Robin Hood—the male model) and being suddenly moved to write the other bike a love letter on behalf or her smitten three-speed. Turns out it belonged to an acquaintance. A female acquaintance. The actual story is much longer because the female acquaintance has a gender-ambiguous nickname.

Then James Longley, who highly recommends the beet salad, announced that Pirates of the Caribbean is no good, even if you have insomnia and are attending a midnight screening.

If you liked The Devil Came on Horseback—or even if you missed it—you should definitely check out The Trials of Darryl Hunt, another excellent documentary by the same filmmaking team that screened at SIFF last year and is opening at Northwest Film Forum on July 27th. Here’s the trailer: