More than 14,000 km away from New Zealand, on the border of a mineral-rich, conflict-riddled country known as the “rape capital of the world”, there is a national park for which men have laid down their lives. It is called Virunga.
This year, an eponymous documentary tells the story of those who seek to protect Africa’s oldest national park, a U nesco World Heritage Site perched on the northeast edge of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Virunga’s mythological beauty calls to mind a real-life Jungle Book meets The Lion King. Its rainforests, savannahs and wetlands are home to over half the species on the African continent, including about a quarter of the world’s mountain gorillas, which live in the shadow of the largest lava lake on earth.
The park bursts with life, yet death is omnipresent. Conflicts catalysed by the genocide in neighbouring Rwanda have resulted in more than five million lives lost in the DRC in the past 20 years. Today, Virunga is under perpetual threat from the nine rebel militias active within its borders, poachers, illegal charcoal traders, and corporations intent on exploiting its natural resources.
The film is set during the M23 rebels’ 2012 invasion of Goma, a lava-scarred city National Geographic once called “the world’s most dangerous”.
Of all the films in the Africa section at the New Zealand International Film Festival, “Virunga is the one where you get in the closest to the personal stories of people on the frontline”, festival director Bill Gosden says.
The film’s four protagonists have each sacrificed their personal comfort and safety for the park, which they believe is one of the DRC’s only hopes for lasting peace.
Take Andr
