Mama Colonel
Colonel Honorine, more commonly known as "Maman Colonelle", works for the Congolese police force as head of the unit for the protection of minors and the fight against sexual violence. After working 15 years in Bukavu, in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she learns that she has been transferred to Kisangani, where she must face new challenges. The film addresses the issues of violence towards women and children in the DRC, and the difficulty of overcoming the past through this portrait of an extraordinarily brave and tenacious woman fighting for justice.
Dieudo Hamadi was born in Kisangani (Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1984, and studied medicine in 2005-2008. He then attended several documentary workshops. Hamadi is the author of two short documentaries, Ladies in Waiting and Zero Tolerance that caught the attention of festivals in Europe (Berlin, Paris, and Amsterdam) and North America (Toronto). Ladies In Waiting received the Pierre and Yolande Perrault scholarship at Cinema du Réel (Paris) in 2009. In 2013, Atalaku, his first feature-length documentary about the 2011 election campaign in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, won the Joris Ivens award for best first film, Best Foreign Film at the San Diego Black Film Festival (USA), the Jury Prize at FIDADOC (Agadir, Morocco) and three other awards. In 2014, National Diploma received both the International Prize of the SCAM and the Potemkin award at Cinéma du Réel (France), and was selected at TIFF (Toronto) and nearly 60 festivals worldwide. In 2015, Mama Colonel, his latest film, received assistance in post-production from the Sundance Institute and IDFA Bertha Fund.