Voices of Violence | schmidfilm.de

Synopsis

*Voices of Violence* is a film about the unimaginable violence against women in the DR Congo and the political and societal system that permits these atrocities. In a country where women are subjected—in particularly brutal ways—to systematic rape used as a weapon of war, Claudia Schmid gives a voice to women who are otherwise completely unknown, revealing how the structures of violence function in all their multifaceted complexity.

For several months, Schmid traveled throughout the Democratic Republic of the Congo, meeting women in the most remote villages of the rebel-held territories and earning their trust. In long, focused conversations, these women reveal their traumatic experiences to the public for the very first time. They recount how they were ambushed, abducted, and abused; how they managed to escape from rebel camps; and why the hell continued even after their return to their villages—ostracized by their own village communities and cast out by their husbands.

As the interview dynamic with the filmmaker intensifies, the women articulate the violence they endured with increasing starkness and directness. These Congolese women are expressive storytellers, finding powerful words and gestures to convey their suffering. Impulsively, they transport themselves back into those specific situations, reenacting the events as they occurred.

The film distills the stories of violence told by various women from a single village into a collective chorus—a chorus whose escalating intensity shapes the film's dramatic arc. To illustrate the full complexity of this violence, Schmid also interviews family members regarding their own experiences and perspectives, engaging them in conversations about the shame and discrimination they face within their village community. Sexual assault remains a taboo subject in the DR Congo; families almost never speak openly about their traumatic experiences.

As the film progresses, Schmid delves ever deeper into the underlying dynamics of this destruction, even interviewing Congolese men on the street regarding the "rights and duties" of both genders. Completely unashamed, they recount that they beat their wives if they do not obey—that girls are, naturally, not allowed to attend school, lest they become too independent, and that a woman is not permitted to own anything. If the husband leaves her, the wife is left to live on the streets. That is simply how things are...

In this way, the warlike violence of the rebels converges with the everyday violence of Congolese men, rendering the situation for women truly hopeless. Thus, the film delves ever deeper into a cosmos defined by the systematic destruction of the population of an entire country. It is solely through the strength of the protagonists—women who have not given up and who now speak out because they want the public to learn of their suffering and see the perpetrators punished—that this most constricted of worlds is finally shattered. And here, the camera sometimes follows the women’s gazes, their movements, and even their dances and songs, leading them out of that confinement...

*Voices of Violence* is a shocking and deeply moving microcosm of primal urges and violence, power and powerlessness, moral blindness and entrapment within tradition.