CHEF!
Camerun, France 1999 | 61 Min. | 16 mm, OmeU
Along an overgrown railtrack south of Kinsangani, ex-Stanleyville, lost refugees are discovered by an expedition of the UN. There are 80.000 (!) Hutus from far away Rwanda. They are the last survivors of three years of hunger and armed persecution through the vast Congo basin. The film follows their traces further into the rainforest, the hopeless attempts of help. It goes to enigmatic places where massacres had happened only the night before. Nobody knows who was shooting. Some humanitarian aid arrives; slowly. The Hutu-refugees leave the forest, gathering in two gigantic camps (Kasese, Biaro). Even though hundreds of people die every day from diseases and malnutrition, new hope arises among the victims of a forgotten war. The Rwandans are being promised repatriation with aeroplanes out of Kisangani. But only four weeks later, the unprotected UN-camps are again machinegunned. Massacred by the celebrated ‘liberating rebel army’ of today’s ‘Democratic Republic’ Congo Kinshasa. During the night of April 25, 1997, eighty thousand children, women and men are either killed or disappeare again, without leaving a trace, back into the jungle.