Watch New Short Film Ani Wa Sa (We Are One) Set in Garamba National Park on Vimeo

Ani Wa Sa, www.dceff.org.

Invisible Children, the organization that created the documentary film "Kony 2012", has released a narrative twenty-eight minute film created for their Mobile Cinema program in central Africa.

Ani Wa Sa

"Ani Wa Sa" (We Are One) was produced by Invisible Children in collaboration with international filmmakers and community partners. It is set in Garamba National Park in Democratic Republic of Congo on the border with South Sudan. The park has been managed by nonprofit organization African Parks in partnership with the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation) (ICCN) since 2005.

Elephants in Garamba National Park by Nuria Ortega, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Garamba National Park is known for poaching wars. In the 1970's there were 22,000 elephants in the park. Poachers made up of South Sudanese armed groups, the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) and others have brought that number down to less than 1,200 elephants today.

"Ani Wa Sa" focuses on the relationship between wildlife exploitation and violent conflict. It highlights the ways Invisible Children, central African communities, and conservation actors are working together to promote peace and security.

Novo summarized the plot, writing, "Two brothers who come from a line of central African Zande hunters, seek to protect their local forest from seemingly opposing avenues: one through family tradition and the other as part of a national park ranger team. Though their relationship has fractured, an advancing rebel group seeking to poach and traffic elephant ivory poses a mutual threat and the brothers may need each other to protect the people and wildlife of their homeland for generations to come."

Watch the short film "Ani Wa Sa" for free on the Novo Vimeo channel.



Mobile Cinema Program

Invisible Children has a Mobile Cinema program that uses the power of film to bring people in vulnerable communities together to brainstorm ideas for the role the community can play in ending violent conflict and promoting peace in their own communities. "Ani Wa Sa" has been screened in more than 65 communities in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic, reaching more than 27,400 people.

It also screened at the DC Environmental Film Festival in 2020. (Watch many films that have screened at the film festival in past years.)

Mobile Cinema program, Invisible Children newsletter.

Invisible Children

"In 2015, after 11 years of advocacy and awareness campaigns that brought the LRA crisis to the attention of the world and its leaders, Invisible Children was restructured to focus more intensively on our programs in the border region of the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan, where multiple armed groups like the LRA continue to operate with impunity. The area is particularly prone to violence because of its severe isolation and lack of governance.

"Our commitment to our founding mission remains as strong as ever. Joseph Kony remains at large, and after more than 30 years of brutal crimes, his impunity continues to be one of the most tragic examples of our world’s failure to treat every human life as equally valuable and worthy of protection.

"Today, we are taking the lessons we’ve learned from more than a decade of working with central African communities to stop LRA violence, and we are expanding our work for an even greater impact. We work with central African communities directly affected by armed group violence to develop locally-led violence prevention strategies, reunite families affected by conflict, and provide world-class conflict analysis."

Continue reading about Invisible Children on www.invisiblechildren.com.