If you think of Netflix documentaries, you’d probably immediately think of true crimes docs and docuseries. It feels like the streaming service just loves its true crime. But next month, Netflix has a new documentary being released and while there is definitely large crimes at the center of the story, the real feeling you get is referenced in the film’s title, “City of Joy.”
“City of Joy” tells the true story of a retreat in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where women are welcomed who have been trying to escape the violence of the wars and militias. As a woman explains in the very beginning of the new trailer for the film, City of Joy was created because rape and torture against women is used as yet another weapon of war by the milita. So, this refuge was created to give women a chance to not only survive, but to also thrive under safe conditions.
The documentary has made its way around the film festivals in 2017 and is finally getting released by Netflix next month. “City of Joy” premieres on Netflix on September 7.
Here’s the synopsis:
CITY OF JOY tells the story of the first class of girls at a remarkable center in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Directed by first time director, Madeleine Gavin, it tells of the visionaries who imagined a revolutionary place where women who have suffered horrific rape and abuse learn to lead amidst a war driven by green, economics and colonialism. The film shares the unlikely friendship that develops when a devout Congolese doctor, Dr. Denis Mukwege, (2016 Nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize), radical playwright and activist, Eve Ensler (Tony Award-winning playwright of The Vagina Monologues) and a charismatic Congolese human rights activist, Christine Schuler Deschryver (Direct of the City of Joy) join forces to create this safe haven in the middle of violence-torn Eastern Congo, a place they call The City of Joy. And it is the story of the incomprehensible power of the human spirit as we witness our characters’ discovery of hope, even when so much of what was meaningful to them has long been stripped away.