Downstream to Kinshasa

For six days in June 2000, a bloody war was waged in the city of Kisangani, located in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, as troops from neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda fought for control of the region’s mining wealth. The brief but bloody war left around 1,000 people dead, and at least 3,000 wounded. For two decades, Kisangani’s civilian victims have been fighting for recognition of this bloody conflict and demanding the compensation they were promised. Tired of unsuccessful pleas and weary of false promises, a delegation of the war’s victims finally decides to take their claims directly to the capital of Kinshasa, after a long and determined journey down the Congo River. Punctuated by re-enactments on a stark theatrical stage, Downstream to Kinshasa is far more than a demand for compensation, it is a portrait of human dignity and the universal need for recognition and visibility.