Introduction 

This article is based on findings from my APDD-supported research project, Screening women in African cinemas of Conflict: Towards gendered peacebuilding public spheres in Zimbabwean communities. The project explored how Zimbabwean women and girls responded to African films depicting women navigating war, violence and conflict in other African contexts. The project examined how audiences interpreted these representations in relation to their own experiences, histories and everyday realities, and whether film screenings and post-screening discussions could create alternative spaces for dialogue on gender, peace and conflict. The findings suggest that such engagements can prompt audiences to reflect on their own experiences of violence and conflict, recognize possibilities for women’s agency, and open spaces for dialogue, solidarity and peacebuilding.

Setting the scene 

Women had gathered in front of screens – in a community hall, a classroom, and a living room in Zimbabwean neighborhoods. They had all just watched stories of war, guilt, grief, conflict and reconciliation in films – Sana N’Hada’s Nome,[1] Mohamed Kordofani’s Goodbye Juliaii,[2] and Apoline Traoré’s Sira.[3] In a Domboshawa living room, as the credits of Nome rolled, and chicken and chips takeaways were passed round, an elderly woman took hers, placed it in front of her and said, “I do not have an appetite anymore. I was a chimbwido (woman/girl who served as a liberation war collaborator) in the war of liberation. This film has reminded me of the things I saw, how the soldiers came into our village and our home, how people were killed . . .”

She spoke at length about her and her family’s experiences of violence and trauma during the Zimbabwean war of liberation. Things she said she had never spoken about publicly since they happened. These were memories triggered by a scene in Nome, where women who had gathered to buy wares from a mobile trader in a village were ambushed by soldiers, leaving their bodies scattered on the bush path with only Nambu surviving because she had retreated to a nearby tree as her labour contractions began.  

Such moments from the screenings constituted a substantial finding in a study that sought to create inclusive and safe spaces for conflict and peacebuilding conversations among ordinary Zimbabwean women and girls. Film screenings had been used for peacebuilding and advocacy elsewhere such as in the Women and Girls Lead Global[4] project. Zimbabwe, a country under constant threat of political violence has been in conflict for a while,[5] and does not have as much room left for open conversations. This is what scholars call the “public sphere”[6]  – the everyday spaces wherewhere ordinary citizens gather to debate the issues that happen in their lives – has been steadily narrowing, squeezed by a state of affairs where unexplained gatherings may be read as political or security threats. Peacebuilding discourse, in particular, has become an elite affair, mostly held in NGO workshops, government fora, and donor-sponsored roundtables. Women and girls, especially from high density suburbs and rural areas are rarely in the room, and when they are, they are hardly the ones talking. 

So, I tried to give them voices by adopting a different approach. Between September and November 2025, I screened three African films centered on women in conflict. These screenings featured the Northern and Southern Sudan conflict experienced at family level in Goodbye Julia, Islamic fundamentalism and sexual exploitation in the Sahel region in Sira, and the history of the Guinea-Bissau war in Nome, – to women and girls in selected Zimbabwean communities including Dzivarasekwa, Hatcliffe, Domboshawa and Luveve. Each screening was followed by a discussion. 

What the films revealed 

I wanted to know if watching films based on how women and girls survive, resist and rebuild after war and conflict inspire Zimbabwean women to imagine possibilities for doing the same? The answer was yes. The audience did not just talk about the films; they also used the films to talk about themselves and their lived experiences. A scene of sexual violence in Sira stirred haunting memories that a woman in the room had carried silently for years. Goodbye Julia’s Mona’s guilt over a death she felt responsible for opened a discussion about blame, forgiveness and what “moving on” actually requires. Also, a scene of a massacre in Nome, triggered a survivor’s memory – conversations that uncannily awakened memories of Zimbabwe’s unresolved histories of political violence and personal trauma.[7] Generational, religious, and cultural differences between the audience and the films’ diverse settings, which I half-expected to be a barrier, turned out to matter far less than the shared, recognizable weight of what it means to be a woman navigating and surviving a conflict she did not choose. This was possible because art and culture have the ability to connect, heal, and provide platforms for open discussion.[8] In this regard, African cinema is universal and versatile, featuring a shared background and common concerns that resonate with audiences across space, place, time, and cultures across the continent.[9]

The key finding was the agentic attitude of the audience during post-screening discussions. They did not only relate to the female characters’ suffering; they related to their resilience, resistance, and efforts at reconciliation. They talked about Sira’s resistance and her determination to save other girls, and to restore peace and harmony in her community. On Goodbye Julia, they discussed Mona’s decision to help Julia, confess, and ask for forgiveness. They also talked about Julia’s choice to forgive and secure her family’s future peacefully. With regard to Nome, they praised Nambu’s decision to confront Nome’s corruption and greed in post independent Guinea-Bissau. They started thinking and speaking reflexively, about what all that could look like for them – as mothers, wives, daughters, and women in their communities, whether dealing with marital problems, drug and substance abuse, gender-based violence, and political violence. By the end of the sessions, women were not just discussing film and peacebuilding anymore. They were making plans to check in on each other, to flag opportunities, and to keep meeting. 

An alternative public sphere 

The other major finding was not that film can raise awareness about gender, conflict, and peacebuilding, but that a film screening and the conversations after it can function as an alternative public sphere. Film screening can create a space where women and girls who are excluded from formal peacebuilding structures get to speak openly and practice being taken seriously on their own terms. The films gave them a shared reference point that was intimate enough to be personal, but distant enough – set in another country, another war – to be safe to talk about. The venues resembled a nhanga – a house or section of a polygamous compound where young, unmarried girls slept. It was also like a girls’ school. The idea behind nhanga was separation, privacy and protection. It was located in a well-defined section of the home with known boundaries, where boys and men could not go unless there was a compelling reason.  

This provides a new and important perspective to how we think about peacebuilding discourses in Zimbabwe and elsewhere. Some analysts and scholars tend to approach peacebuilding in terms of post-conflict processes or actions such as mediation, ceasefire negotiations, reconstruction, transitional justice mechanisms, and donor-funded dialogue platforms. These processes matter but they are often elitist and formal. The screenings suggested that peacebuilding can happen in a bottom-up format; in informal, unglamorous, and undocumented everyday spaces where women gather; sometimes with communally sourced equipment and conversations that run an hour longer than planned. ‘Women, peace and security,’[10] becomes more than a policy phrase when we take these spaces and the conversations held within them as seriously as the formal ones. 

Filmmaking and peacebuilding 

The other half of this project included a film screening with stakeholders in Harare. Zimbabwean filmmakers are keen to tell these stories in their own context. Conflict and peacebuilding cinema centering women is still rare in the country. The screenings suggest that Zimbabwean audiences are ready to use film to process conflict, reflect on their experiences, and imagine possibilities for agency. The scarcity of homegrown stories that create such spaces is therefore a missed opportunity, not only for Zimbabwe’s film sector, but also for peacebuilding practice, which too often privileges workshops and manuals over creative and participatory forms of engagement.  

I went into the project wanting to understand how women read and respond to representations of conflict, and whether film could create space for their participation in peacebuilding conversations. I came out of it having watched rooms full of strangers become intimate spaces of reflection, disclosure, solidarity, and possibility; spaces that came close to functioning as support networks among women and girls over the course of two hours. The real question is no longer whether film belongs in peacebuilding work, but why we have spent so long assuming that it does not. 

Endnotes

  1. Sana Na N’Hada, dir., Nome (Guinea-Bissau, France, Portugal, and Angola: Spectre Productions and LX Filmes, 2023).
  2. Mohamed Kordofani, dir., Goodbye Julia (Sudan, Egypt, Germany, France, Saudi Arabia, and Sweden: Station Films, 2023).
  3. Apolline Traoré, dir., Sira (Burkina Faso, France, Germany, and Senegal: Les Films Selmon and Araucania Films, 2023).
  4. The Aspen Institute. Women and Girls Lead Global: Phase 2 Final Evaluation Report. Aspen Planning and Evaluation Program, (2018).
  5. Chabikwa, Rutendo. “Women, Peace and Security in Zimbabwe-The Case of Conflict in Non War Zones.” Journal of African Conflicts and Peace Studies 4, no. 2 (2021): 3. https://doi.org/10.5038/2325-484X.4.2.1141.
  6. Habermas, Jürgen. “The public sphere: An encyclopedia article (1964).” The idea of the public sphere: A reader (2010): 114-120.
  7. Mlambo, Alois, and Brian Raftopoulos. Becoming Zimbabwe: A history from the pre-colonial period to 2008. African Books Collective, (2023).
  8. Deane, Tameshnie. “The Case for Arts in Reconciliation and Peacebuilding in Africa.” Southern African Journal of Security(2024): 18-pages.  https://doi.org/10.25159/3005-4222/16141.
  9. Agina, Añuli, Barbara Knorpp, and Winston Mano, eds. African film cultures: Contexts of creation and circulation. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017.
  10. UN Security Council, Resolution 1325, Women, Peace and Security, S/RES/1325 (October 31, 2000), https://undocs.org/S/RES/1325.