Democratic Republic of the Congo / 2010 / 18mins / Documentary / French and English

Rape as a weapon of war has had much press, most notably in the recent Congo wars. Less discussed is the legacy it has left behind; a desensitized acceptance of the abuse of women at the hands of criminals, opportunists and most worryingly, ordinary men. Hamadi's short documentary film aims to get right to heart of the matter by following the Head of the Sexual Violence Unit, in Bukavu, Eastern DRC, she arrests two teenage brothers who rape a women returning from the shops and a man who rapes a women because he thinks she is a witch. Hamadi's focus is on an Eastern DRC town where political correctness holds no sway, and in so doing he attempts to show both the depth of the problem and the attempts by authorities to reset the national moral code. The film's unexpected triumph is its honesty - both in the depiction of poverty and the community's burgeoning anger at the endemic abuse.

Dieudo Hamadi

Dieudo Hamadi was born in Kisangani, Democratic Republic of the Congo in February 1984 and studied bio-medicine from 2005 to 2008. Since 2002, he has completed several documentary film workshops and video editing courses and has worked as an editor, producer, and assistant director, for Suka! Productions. He directed Congo in Four Acts - Ladies in Waiting (Dames en attente - 2009) and Congo in Four Acts - Zero Tolerance (Tolérance zéro - 2009). In 2014, with National Diploma (Examen d’Etat), he follows high school students who are unable to pass their final exams because they cannot pay school fees unfairly inflicted upon them. Dieudo Hamadi received the Cinéma du réel Grand prize in 2017 for Mama Colonel. Learn More