Steidle got the job via the Internet and quickly realized how deeply he was in over his head. The cease-fire between the Muslim government forces in the north of the country and the black animist revolutionaries in the south held everywhere but in the primarily Muslim western province of Darfur, where government-backed militias known as "janjaweed" -- "the devil on a horse" -- massacred entire villages, man, woman, and child.
Too often the movies view the problems of Africa through Western eyes, but "Devil" turns that weakness to a literal strength, because Steidle could do nothing in his position except take photographs. He returned to the United States after six months with hundreds of images of genocide: burned corpses, hacked children, body after body after body.
In time, this soft-spoken jarhead became radicalized, taking his photos to The New York Times and speaking out at rallies and colleges, pressing the Bush administration or the United Nations or anyone to do something to stop the ongoing carnage.
Steidle's photos are horrific beyond human imagination, and yet we still don't see enough of them. The film's first third, a limp collage-like re-creation of his journey to Darfur, doesn't hint at the sheer, damning mass of evidence he would come home with. It isn't until he begins his atrocity tour back in the United States that we understand what's at stake: a testament of genocide for a global citizenry that's afraid to even say the word.
Perhaps this is just novice filmmaking. "The Devil Came on Horseback" is on stronger ground when Steidle, accompanied by his sister Gretchen, returns to Sudanese refugee camps in Chad and speaks with men and women who've come away with only their lives, and barely that. One man tearfully thanks America for sending relief supplies, saying, "We receive nothing from the Arab world. We are Muslim, you know. They hate us, and they want us to hate others."
