L’Empire du silence (Empire of Silence) is Belgian filmmaker Thierry Michel’s newest film about the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). For more than thirty years, Michel traveled across the country, camera in hand, witnessing not only fighting and suffering, but also the hope of the Congolese people. In this latest film, Michel responds to a plea from Nobel Peace Prize winner and medical doctor Denis Mukwege, the subject of his last film, L’homme qui qui répare les femmes (The Man Who Mends Women). In doing so, he retraces the succession of ruthless violence that has been ravaging and ruining Congo for a quarter of a century—concerned not with the victims this time, but with their executioners.

The victims number in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and the perpetrators of these crimes are countless: a multitude of rebel movements, but also regular armies, including those from Congo-Kinshasa and neighboring countries Uganda and Rwanda. They commit their heinous crimes with impunity and general indifference—while multinationals continue to profit from the riches of Congolese soil and subsoil, in particular copper, cobalt, and uranium.

This feature film is also an aesthetic object that aims to move the viewer. The massacre scenes are interspersed with sublime landscapes and accompanied by a powerful original score, profound songs that speak of a people’s pain.