Movies Like Hope Has A Name

The Peacekeepers

2005

With unprecedented access to the UN Department of Peacekeeping, The Peacekeepers provides an intimate and dramatic portrait of the struggle to save "a failed state" The film follows the determined and often desperate maneuvers to avert another Rwandan disaster, this time in the Democratic Republic of Congo (the DRC). Focusing on the UN mission, the film cuts back and forth between the UN headquarters in New York and events on the ground in the DRC. We are with the peacekeepers in the "Crisis Room" as they balance the risk of loss of life on the ground with the enormous sums of money required from uncertain donor countries. We are with UN troops as the northeast Congo erupts and the future of the DRC, if not all of central Africa, hangs in the balance. In the background, but often impinging on peacekeeping decisions, are the painful memory of Rwanda, the worsening crisis in Iraq, global terrorism, and American hegemony in world affairs.

The Vocation

1974

Sven Nykvist, best known as Ingmar Bergman cinematographer, made this film as a tribute to his father who was a missionary in Kongo in the early 20th century. The story of his father Gustav Natanael Nykvist is told through his own photos, letters, and films. Director & cinematographer: Sven Nykvist. Narrators in the English dubbed version: Liv Ullmann & Sean Connery. Produced by Ingmar Bergman (Cinematograph AB). Digitally restored in 2022.

Le dernier poumon du monde

2019

Kisangani Diary

1998

Along an overgrown rail track south of the Zairean town Kisangani, a UN expedition together with a handful of journalists discover “lost” refugees. They are eighty thousand Hutus from far away Rwanda, the last survivors of three years of hunger and armed persecution that transpired throughout the vast Congo basin. The Hutu-refugees leave the forest, gathering in two gigantic camps. Hundreds of refugees die every day from diseases and malnutrition The Rwandans are promised repatriation with airplanes out of Kisangani. The film traces those refugees into the heart of the rainforest, and the hopeless attempts to help them.. But only four weeks later, the unprotected UN-camps are again attacked by machine-gun fire, deliberately massacred by factions of the rebel army (AFDL) of today’s Democratic Republic Congo. Eighty thousand men, women and children disappear once again back into the jungle. (jedensvet.cz)

Lords of the Forest

1958

Documentary about the inhabitants, both human and animal, of the Belgian Congo.

King Leopold's Ghost

2006

The modern history of the Congo, the heart of Africa, is a terrifying tale of appalling brutality: how the greedy and incredibly ruthless King Leopold II of Belgium (1935-1909) turned a vast country into his private estate (1885-1908) and how he plundered the land and raped the bodies and souls of its defenceless inhabitants, causing countless victims; and what exactly is the true impact of this often forgotten story of crime and horror today.

The Rhythmatist

1985

A musical oddessy through the heart of Africa in search of the roots of Rock & Roll.

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

2024

Jazz and decolonization are intertwined in a powerful narrative that recounts one of the tensest episodes of the Cold War.

Across the World with Mr. and Mrs. Johnson

1930

As if they were showing their film to a few friends in their home, the Johnsons describe their trip across the world, which begins in the South Pacific islands of Hawaii, Samoa, Australia, the Solomons (where they seek and find cannibals), and New Hebrides. Thence on to Africa via the Indian Ocean, Suez Canal, North Africa, and the Nile River to lion country in Tanganyika. (They are briefly joined in Khartum by George Eastman and Dr. Al Kayser.) Taking a safari in the Congo, the Johnsons see animals and pygmies, and travel back to Uganda, British East Africa, and Kenya.

John Bishop's Gorilla Adventure

2015

John Bishop encounters one of the most endangered animals on Earth, and discovers they and his family have more in common than he ever imagined. Filming in the jungles of Rwanda for John Bishop’s Gorilla Adventure, the comedian realises adolescent male mountain gorillas are just like his teenage sons – bulging muscles but no sense. Plus they fart, flirt and pick their noses. We follow John as he joins a group of vets who have dedicated their lives to saving the, sadly, precious few mountain gorillas left in the wild rugged mountains and valleys between the borders of Rwanda, Congo and Uganda, which were made famous to UK viewers by David Attenborough’s iconic sequence filmed among them in the 1970s.

Miss Marple: 4.50 from Paddington

1987

Travelling on the 4.50 from Paddington, Mrs McGillicuddy witnesses a murder on a passing train - but where is the body?

Empire of Dust

2011

Lao Yang is head of logistics of the group. He is responsible for the equipment, building materials and food (mainly chickens) to arrive in the isolated Chinese prefab camp. The Congolese government was supposed to deliver these things but so far the team hasn't received anything. With Eddy (a Congolese man who speaks Mandarin fluently) as an intermediate, Lao Yang is forced to leave the camp and deal with local Congolese entrepreneurs, because without the construction materials the road works will cease. What follows is an endless, harsh, but absurdly funny roller coaster of negotiations and misunderstandings, as Lao Yang learns about the Congolese way of making deals.

The Naked City

1948

After a former model is drowned in her bathtub, Detective James Halloran and Lieutenant Dan Muldoon attempt to piece together her murder.

Burnt Earth

1934

A visual travel diary on the expedition led by Brondeel in 1934. This expedition to Belgian Congo, by truck, became a testimony to the social conditions of Africans during the colonial era.

Nightfall

1956

An innocent man turns fugitive as he reconstructs events that implicate him for a murder and robbery he did not commit.

Lumumba: Death of a Prophet

1991

Documentary about African political leader Patrice Lumumba, who was Prime Minister of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) when he was assassinated in 1961.

The Black Book

2023

After his son is wrongly accused of kidnapping, a deacon who has just lost his wife takes matters into his own hands and fights a crooked police gang to clear him.

Conflict

1945

Unhappily married Richard Mason concocts a meticulous scheme to kill his shrewish wife so that he'll be free to marry her sister.