Can a video trigger a war in Africa? This documentary investigates a controversial 2012 charity film that went viral, and asks whether the video and US-led hunt for Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony served as a cover for US military operations in Africa.
It was an internet sensation: The video “Kony 2012” posted by the non-profit group Invisible Children generated millions of clicks in the space of days and deeply moved viewers around the world. This documentary examines the background of its success. It concludes that the video served US geopolitical interests more than any charitable campaign, providing a pretext for a military operation in a strategically important region of Africa. In the spring of 2014, journalists Étienne Heger and Boris Huver travelled to the Obo region of the Central African Republic to report on the hunt by the US and its African allies for Joseph Kony, the notorious Ugandan leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army. In 2018, Jean-Baptiste Renaud continued their investigations in Uganda and in the US. There, he discovered how a network of religious groups and politicians associated with the evangelical movement capitalized on the tragedy of Joseph Kony’s recruitment of child soldiers to advance a deeply fundamentalist, evangelical agenda in Uganda.
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