Donga

“There was excitement in the air,” says Donga, now in his late twenties, describing his feelings when the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi’s rule broke out in 2011. He was 19, living in Misrata, and boldly went to film the fighting with a friend. A decade later, in a hotel in Istanbul, where he has been living since he was wounded in battle, he looks back on the past ten years through excerpts from his videos. And he reflects on how that period has affected him.

The bravado and hope of 2011 gave way to sadness in the years that followed, during which he also filmed the fight against ISIS and General Khalifa Haftar’s military campaign. At the time, Donga wasn’t able to imagine the consequences—mental, psychological and physical. Most of the people he met in the 2011 battle are dead. He has come to realize that war offers no solutions.

Donga is a personal account of ten years of Libyan struggle, including moments of beauty, humor and community. But the film also illustrates the collective disillusionment with the outcome of the 2011 uprising, which brought the country no peace. Despite everything, Donga is not despairing: “We believe in change!”