Sudan in the early 1990s is run by a hidden council of nine members belonging to a secret Islamic society, and this film goes looking for who they are and what they want. At a Koranic school, boys spend four years memorizing the Koran while a teacher tells the camera that Sudan will carry Islam's torch to every country. Dr. Hassan Turabi, the movement's leading voice, appears on camera arguing for a single pan-Islamic state stretching beyond Sudan's borders. The film also visits Koba jail, where guards watch over recently released prisoners as they speak of repentance, a scene that says as much about the state's methods as any statistic. Outside the prison walls, the government points to economic progress while roughly a fifth of the population depends on food aid, and political opposition has nowhere legal to go. The army's recent victory over the SPLA rebels is framed by many Sudanese, the film notes, as proof that Islam itself defeated the West.