Audio-visual media: documentary filmmaking

Documentary filmmaking has long been recognized as a powerful tool of conflict and peacebuilding communication. The communicative value of documentary film is narrative and participatory, portraying peacebuilding as an unfinished, ongoing, and laborious task. We explore these contributions through our own documentary film work and through scholarship and documentary filmmaking within International Relations and peace studies. Foregrounding narration of conflict and peace actors’ experiences, documentary film can tell stories about war and peace that challenge hegemonic and linear narratives of conflict and its aftermath. Documentary films have juxtaposed direct testimony and narration of conflict-affected actors (such as young people, women, former fighters, displaced persons, and victims of war) with more militaristic and nationalist accounts of conflict and peace. They can raise powerful questions about audience and impact, bring stories of war and peace to a wider audience, and facilitate dialogue and understanding between conflicting parties.