Screening documentary
Screening documentary on peacekeepers in Mali: Colombes Sans Gravité/Doves in Zero Gravity
- Date
- Tuesday 16 September 2025
- Time
- Explanation
- Free and open to the public (registration required)
- Address
-
Wijnhaven
Turfmarkt 99
2511 DP The Hague - Room
- 3.60
Join us for this special screening of the documentary Colombes Sans Gravité (Doves in Zero Gravity) on the peacekeeping efforts in Mali. Afterwards, there will be a Q&A with the director Christophe Gargot; Bert Koenders, former head of the UN mission in Mali and an interviewee in the documentary; and Prof. Mirjam de Bruijn, expert on Mali at the Africa Studies Centre. The discussion will be moderated by Tom Buitelaar, Assistant Professor in War, Peace & Justice.
How the prolonged crisis in Mali has turned peacekeepers into powerless pawns caught between local wars and global geopolitics in a changing World Order.
Ten years ago, the UN Security Council, following the French military intervention, decided to establish a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali.
The international forces were there to stabilize the country, help restore state authority and keep jihadis at bay.
But despite the signing of a peace agreement between the government of Mali and secessionist armed groups in 2015, jihadi groups continued to gain ground in the Sahel. In 2020, a military junta took over the state and hired Wagner Group Russian mercenaries. This led to the departure of the French military operation Barkhane, and to the expulsion of the UN mission MINUSMA not long after in 2023.
Immersed in the heart of the operational and decision-making bodies of the United Nations mission in Mali and New York and enlightened by the testimony of those directly involved, Doves in Zero Gravity questions both the international interventionist model and the lost illusions of political solutions and peace processes, at a time when a multiplicity of asymmetrical conflicts with a high potential for contagion leads us to fear the return of global confrontation.
Christophe Gargot is the author and director of From Arusha to Arusha, a feature film about the international justice system's handling of the Rwandan genocide. The film was selected at the Berlinale in 2009, among others, and was critically acclaimed upon its theatrical release. Doves in Zero Gravity is his second political documentary film. Once again, he demonstrates that complex historical issues have their place on the big screen where they can help elucidate the way the world works.
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