Juwaa

The wounds of the past still linger in the present in Nganji Mutiri’s powerfully acted drama about identity, family ties, and intergenerational trauma, winner of Best Film at the Kinshasa Film Festival. The brutal assassination of her husband drives a committed journalist (an astounding Babetida Sadjo) to flee the Democratic Republic of the Congo for exile in Brussels, leaving her young son behind; years later, that son is at her doorstep for college, and neither can speak of a past that still haunts them. “What we keep silent destroys us from inside.” Aided by his talented cast, Mutiri underlines the impact of such silence on all communities affected by unspoken, untreated trauma.