The Testimony (2015 film)

The Testimony is a 2015 American short-documentary film about the "Minova Trial", conducted in 2014 by the army of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to prosecute government troops' rapes and atrocities committed against women in Minova in 2012. It was the largest rape trial in DRC history.

The film is directed and shot by Vanessa Block and produced by Block, Steve Tisch, Mitchell Block and Michael Sarnoski. The Testimony was shortlisted with ten other documentaries from 74 entries submitted to the 88th Academy Awards in Documentary Short Subject category.

Following the Second Congo War, hostilities soon broke out again in 2004 in the eastern part of the country. Tutsi-allied rebels fought against government troops and UN forces. The warfare in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has involved troops and insurgents from numerous countries and resulted in more deaths than any other war since World War II.

In November 2012, the M23 rebellion drove the Congolese Army out of the eastern city of Goma. After retreating to Minova, the humiliated government soldiers systematically raped hundreds of civilian women for the next three days. There were reports that officers encouraged the men to attack the women. The atrocity drew international outrage, and the "UN condemned the atrocity as “horrifying” in its scale and systematic nature." The global community promised intervention. William Hague, then foreign secretary in the United Kingdom, and the film star Angelina Jolie, a UN special envoy for refugees, visited a refugee camp and later pledged "to eradicate sexual violence in war zones, with its lead focus on eastern Congo."