IN MEMORY OF JOEY R.B. LOZANO

 

Many politicians have shady pasts, but it’s not every day that a warlord is elected President. Thus, it was little surprise that shortly after Charles Taylor became president of Liberia in 1997, the country erupted into its second Civil War. After more than 250,000 people were killed and a million more displaced, thousands of women came together to combat the violence with a vow of peace. Men started the war, but women would end it.

Gini Reticker’s astounding film follows Leymah Gbowee, an ordinary Liberian woman who had the extraordinary misfortune of having to witness not one, but two civil wars. Resonating with the words of Martin Luther King, Gbowee “had a dream” to gather the women of her church together to pray, the first step in a journey strategy that would spawn an activist Christian women’s organization and a parallel Muslim movement.

Through raw archival footage, international media coverage and the direct testimony of these brave women, Reticker reveals the ferocity of the women’s heroism, will and determination. When peace talks in Ghana came to a standstill, the women formed a physical barricade around the building and didn’t allow the men to exit until a deal was bartered.

Their tireless work led to a peace agreement, the arrest of Taylor (who is awaiting trial in the International Criminal court for crimes against humanity), and culminated in the election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female head of state. And it all began with a dream.

—Sky Sitney