Kisangani Diary

After the massacre among Tutsis in 1994, many tens of thousands of Hutus fled to Zaire. Many of them never returned. In March 1997, Hubert Sauper travelled along on a UN train, in search of these ‘forgotten‘ refugees, who were leading a poor existence more than a thousand kilometres from home, victim to famine, disease and attacks by various armed militias. Along the tracks that are overgrown by the rainforest, Sauper leads the spectator to the ‘heart of the darkness‘, the same place where Conrad wrote his novel a century ago. The film confronts the audience with the consequences of civil war: chaos and inconceivable suffering. Sauper shows images of emaciated children with large eyes and of silent adults with a gaze that betrays their feelings that all hope has evaporated. We see how photographers and cameramen depict the misery, and we observe the impotence of the international community: time and again, relief runs up against logistical problems.