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Masika in SEEDS OF HOPE

-        Seeds of Hope tells the extraordinary story of Masika and her journey to help women and children who have experienced sexual violence in conflict in eastern Congo.  

-        Award-winning filmmaker Fiona Lloyd-Davies takes us to ‘the most dangerous place in the world for women’ – the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo – in her film Seeds of Hope.

-        Seeds of Hope is a Studio 9 Films production with Al Jazeera English supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

-        Screening and Q&A from 2pm - 4pm in the Dag Hammarskjold Library auditorium, New York, 20th  November 2014 

-        UN Special Representative office for Prevention of Sexual Violence in Conflict Zainab Bengura will be taking part in the Q&A with Fiona Lloyd-Davies

Following the UK premier of Seeds of Hope at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence which was held in London and co-chaired by the former Foreign Secretary Rt Hon William Hague and Angelina Jolie, UNHCR Special Envoy. Studio 9 Films will show Seeds of Hope at a screening  hosted by the UN Special Representative office for Prevention of Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Bangura in New York on 20th September, 2014 followed by a Q&A with film maker Fiona Lloyd-Davies and Zainab Bengura. Screenings will also take place at The British Consulate-General in Montreal on 18th November, Washington DC on 19th November, Philadelphia on 21st November and in Zagreb and the House of Lords, London later in the year.

Seeds of Hope tells the extraordinary story of Masika and her journey to help women and children who have experienced sexual violence in conflict in eastern Congo. Masika, herself a multiple rape survivor, has helped thousands of women and children in eastern Congo who have suffered physical and sexual violence.

Every hour, 48 women are raped in Congo (DR). Eastern Congo was described as the ‘rape capital of the world’ by Margot Wolstrom, the United Nations Special Representative for Sexual Violence in Conflict in 2011. A new generation of children, born from rape in the DRC are growing up in a country where violence is a regular occurrence. It’s become a place where there is widespread acceptance of rape and brutality towards women. “Whenever there is fighting, militia use rape as a weapon of war”, Masika says.

Filmmaker Fiona Lloyd-Davies also interviews perpetrators of rape, among them soldiers from the Congolese army. Groundbreaking interviews are captured with the soldiers whose duty it is to protect the women they are brutally violating. These men give extraordinarily open testimony as to why they rape and their attitudes towards their horrific acts. As one soldier candidly reveals, “Raping gives us a lot of pleasure. When we rape we feel free.” This calls into question the crucial issue of justice and as one of the women, Nzgira, poignantly says, “If justice is done maybe this will stop the soldiers. It’s just they aren’t afraid of anything.”

Filmed over three years and capturing the ebb and flow of the seasons, we see how the process of farming this small patch of land empowers and transforms these women. The field is their hope, their therapy and their source of food and income. The rape victims and hundreds of children born from rape sow lines of seed every quarter (three months). Together they nurture them, pray for good weather and eventually harvest them to eat, sell and plant again to generate more crops.

The field becomes a central feature, almost a character, both in its symbolic value and as a signifier of time passing.  The process of renewal and rebirth that nature provides offers up hope and a restored focus to the women. As one of the women, Mongera, remarks, “When we meet as a group, for a moment, it helps us forget what we’ve been through.” The women build new friendships, helping them come to terms with their pasts and look to make plans for the future.

The extraordinary natural beauty of Congo is juxtaposed against the horrific experiences that these women have endured and the threat of sexual violence that remains, lurking in such landscapes.

Since the filming of Seeds of Hope, 39 soldiers have stood trial for the crimes that took place in Minova in November 2012. Only two were convicted of rape as a war crime. Fiona Lloyd-Davies has produced a documentary on both the aftermath of the rapes in 2012 and the trial.

While the seeds show that there is a way forward and a glimmer of hope, its clear that there’s little justice for these women at present. Masika believes that until there is peace in DRC there will be rape: “Whenever there is fighting there is rape.” Despite the recent Minova trial,  prosecutions are rare and impunity still prevails. The battle against an endemic rape culture is far from over.

Senator Mobina Jaffer said: “Seeds of Hope conveys unimaginable pain, but also the hope and strength of the women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It further portrays a British filmmaker, Fiona, reaching out to portray the pain of her Congolese sister, Masika.”

This film takes us deep into the lives of women and children who are rarely given a voice and rarely seen on screen. Seeds of Hope shows how one woman's enterprise helps thousands of Congo's rape survivors find healing and independence through farming. As one of the women explains, “we are always very happy when we have our seeds, because seeds are our hope”.

www.seedsofhopefilm.co.uk