Since 1998 a brutal war has been raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Over 4 million people have died, and 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. Until now, the world has known nothing of their stories. A survivor of gang rape herself, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Lisa F. Jackson has created an extraordinary film in which these brave women finally speak.
Documentary about the use of sexual violence against women as a weapon in the Sierra Leone civil war. The story is told through the eyes of survivors: women and girls, as well as the child soldiers and perpetrators.
Filmmakers Ayala and Fallshaw follow Fetim Sellami, a Saharawi refugee, to North Africa for a reunion with her mother. Mother and child were spearated when Sellami was a toddler. But the UN-sponsored reunion reveals a secret which spirals the film into a dark world the filmmakers could never have imagined. The black Saharawis start talking about a forbidden subject... their enslavement.
In no other country has sexual violence matched the scale of brutality reached in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). During nearly two decades of conflicts between rebels and government forces, an estimated 150,000 Congolese women and girls fell victim to mass rape. In personal interviews, soldiers and former combatants provide openhearted but shocking testimony about rape in the DRC. Despite differing views on causes or criminal status, all reveal how years of conflict, as well as discrimination against women, have normalized brutal sexual violence. We also see former rapists struggling to change their own or others' behavior, and reintegrate into their communities.
Profiles a village in Kashmir that was the site of a mass rape by Indian Security Forces in 1991. Depicts the impact that the mass rape continues to have on a community even over a decade later, reminding viewers that rape as a weapon of war is a global phenomenon that has continued throughout time.
Shot undercover in Afghanistan during Taliban rule, this hard-hitting documentary investigates how women's groups fought against fundamentalism under one of the most gender-repressive regimes in the contemporary world. The film won the World Medal at the New York Festival.
Before ISIS overran his town in Northern Iraq, Khalil al-Dakhi was a lawyer. But now, he leads an underground railroad that rescues women and children who have been taken captive by ISIS. In Escaping ISIS, a hard-hitting documentary, FRONTLINE delivers a stunning look at the plight of women and children who are Yazidis, a religious minority that have been targeted by ISIS for particularly brutal treatment. "ISIS believes Yazidi women can be enslaved, under their interpretation of Islam, " says FRONTLINE's Edward Watts. "We've spoken with some of the first Yazidi women to escape from ISIS and uncovered accounts that ISIS fighters are raping Yazidi girls as young as nine."
When the Balkans exploded into war in the 1990s, reports that tens of thousands of women were being systematically raped as a tactic of ethnic cleansing captured the international spotlight. I Came to Testify is the moving story of how a group of 16 women who had been imprisoned by Serb-led forces in the Bosnian town of Foca broke history's great silence - and stepped forward to take the witness stand in an international court of law. Their remarkable courage resulted in a triumphant verdict that led to new international laws about sexual violence in war. Returning to Bosnia 16 years after the end of the conflict, I Came to Testify also explores the chasm between this seismic legal shift and the post-war justice experienced by most of Bosnia's women war survivors
Last Chance tells the stories of 5 asylum seekers who flee their native countries to escape homophobic violence. They face hurdles integrating into Canada, fear deportation and anxiously await a decision that will change their lives forever.