Multimedia Collection
Lumo
DVD
72 min
2006
RC560 .R36 L85 2007 DVD
The agonies of war torn Africa are deeply etched in the bodies of women. In eastern Congo, vying militias, armies and bandits use rape as a weapon of terror.
Recently engaged to a young man from her village, 20 year-old Lumo Sinai couldn't wait to have children and start a family. But when she crossed paths with marauding soldiers who brutally attacked her, she was left with a fistula - a condition that renders her incontinent and threatens her ability to give birth in the future. Rejected by her fiancé and cast aside by her family, Lumo found her way to the one place that may save her: a hospital for rape survivors along the border with Rwanda.
Buoyed by the love of the hospital staff, including a formidable team of wise women known to all as "the Mamas," Lumo and her friends keep alive the hope of one day resuming their former lives, thanks to an operation that can restore them fully to health. A feisty young woman with a red comb perpetually jutting from her hair, Lumo faces the challenge of recovery with remarkable courage and sass. As she and her friends recover from surgery, they pass the days by gossiping and sharing their dreams of one day finding love.
But when it looks like her operation may have failed, Lumo's faith is thrown entirely into question. On her uncertain road to recovery, Lumo shows that the solidarity of women can bind the most irreparable of wounds.
Lumo is an intimate look into a woman's tragedy and healing process, and, by extension, into the scourge of rape that marks the war-torn politics of central Africa.
HEAL Africa organization.
In Kongo, with optional subtitles in English, French or German.
Distributed by The Cinema Guild, Inc.
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