Honoring a Legacy

THE GREATEST SILENCE: RAPE IN THE CONGO

Expired May 30, 2022 6:00 AM
Already unlocked? for access

Since the late 1990s, more people have died in war-torn Congo than in any conflict since World War II. In addition to the dead, hundreds of thousands of woman and girls have been raped. Rape, explains a British colonel, is a weapon of war, part of a destabilization covering the theft of valuable minerals. Rape victims are traumatized, injured, abandoned by husbands, pregnant, and ravaged by disease.


Winner of the Sundance Special Jury Prize in Documentary and the inspiration for a 2008 U.N. Resolution classifying rape as a weapon of war, this extraordinary film, shot in the war zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), shatters the silence that surrounds the use of sexual violence as a weapon of conflict.


Many tens of thousands of women and girls have been systematically kidnapped, raped, mutilated and tortured by soldiers from both foreign militias and the Congolese army. A survivor of gang rape herself, Emmy Award®-winning filmmaker Lisa F. Jackson travels through the DRC to understand what is happening and why.


Emmy Award Nominee for Outstanding Informational Programming: Long Form and Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Writing.

  • Year
    2007
  • Runtime
    76 minutes
  • Language
    English
  • Country
    United States, the Democratic Republic of the
  • Director
    Lisa F. Jackson
Copy link