Guide Note:

The Greatest Silence is a documentary which won the Special Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The film is based on the true story of several Congolese women who were kidnapped, raped, mutilated and tortured after the war in 1998, and their stories of survival.

Fast Facts:

1. Director and Screenwriter: Lisa F. Jackson
2. Run time: 85 minutes
3. Television premiere on HBO in April 2008
4. Winner of Special Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival

Brief Background

The Greatest Silence has as its disturbing subject the systematic rape of women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the decade-long civil war there. Director Lisa F. Jackson, herself a survivor of a gang rape in Washington, D.C., interviewed not only victims for her documentary, but also health care workers and even the rapists themselves. In some of the most chilling scenes, the rapists describe how because of their military duty away from society and women, they are "entitled" to be able to rape, and that forcing themselves sexually upon these helpless women provides them with magical energy that benefits them in battle. In April 2008, the documentary had its television premiere on HBO.