The Colonial Misunderstanding

The City of Wuppertal in the 19th Century was from where German missionaries set off to proclaim the "New Message to the Dark Continent". The goal of their journey was Cameroon, South Africa, Togo and primarily Namibia. The expansion of the Christian faith gradually became more and more closely related to economic interests. In 1884, at the Berlin Congress of the European Powers, Africa was divided into spheres of influence and Christian ideals definitively took a back seat. Twenty years later the Germans unleashed a war in Namibia against the original inhabitants - the Herero. Over a three-year period tens of thousands of Herero were murdered, starved to death in the middle of the desert, or locked away in concentration camps, an ominous prelude to Auschwitz and Dachau. In a film full of interesting historical connections, Jean-Marie Teno, a French director of Cameroonian descent, takes us on a captivating search for what remains of the legacy of the first German missionaries in the Dark Continent, and the damages caused by colonialism in the hearts and minds of contemporary Africans.