LIDF

Tonight’s film, about confessions of rape and violence during warfare in the Democratic Republic of Congo was, for me, an uncomfortable watch – and not just due to the highly difficult subject matter.  It was one of those films that halfway through you become aware that something’s frustrating you, something’s not sitting right, yet you can’t put your finger on what it is.

This is where a good Q+A and rigorous ‘conversation in film’ comes in; to help you formulate your thoughts into a coherent sentence and have them challenged by others.

Tonight was just such a night.

Andrea, a BBC journalist and Shelly, a medical Anthropologist lead the discussion which quickly steered away from the uses of sexual violence in warfare, and towards the reason for the film’s focus on the rapists, either those seeking forgiveness or those refusing to address the issue, and not on the women that were raped.  I began to realise why I had been feeling uncomfortable.

‘Weapon of War’, cleverly, does not do what you want it to do. It does not show these men as engaging emotionally with what they have done, instead we are presented with ex-soldiers who, on trying to re-enter society, struggle with bad dreams and what they see as a “sickness that won’t heal”- a feeling that they are always on the edge of committing rape again. Their apparent lack of emotion towards the women is shocking, and the latter’s slim presence in the film emphasises this absent empathy.

Questions from audience members turned the discussion towards this absence – “ Why do the men appear  so lighthearted about the atrocities they have committed, even when seemingly seeking redemption?”, “How could the woman, on confronting her rapist at the end of the film, say ‘we can now forgive each other?’” Truly heartbreaking.

At the end of a passionate debate I felt that we had all come to the conclusion that perhaps this film is less about sexual violence as a ‘Weapon of War’, and more about how sexual violence, and the way it is subsequently dealt with by society and it’s individuals, is a shocking reflection of how woman are seen and treated in general. That they remain possessions to be appropriated or discarded and that sexual violence will not cease, and the perpetrators will not truly feel it to be a barbaric atrocity, until these women are thought of as equal human beings.