‘This is not a movie about the conflict, it is a movie from the conflict.’ Premiering in Berlinale’s Panorama Documentary section, Enough Is Enough by Elisé Sawasawa is a searing, unflinching portrait of life amid decades of violence in eastern Congo.
Enough Is Enough (original title: Trop c’est trop), a documentary by Congolese filmmaker Elisé Sawasawa, premiered in the Panorama Documentary section of the 76th Berlinale. The title — “enough is enough” — is yelled out by a generation of Congolese, of which Sawasawa is one, who have never known a single day of peace. There have been decades of violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and yet the world takes little notice. This documentary exposes the realities of the daily life of a person living in eastern Congo, exposes the horrific living conditions, the hypocrisy of humanitarian aid, and the humanity that remains, despite it all. Congo is not a country often spoken about in Western news headlines, and so this unbelievably powerful documentary marks a positive step in the direction of bringing awareness and attention to this devastating conflict.
The film unfolds in amongst the long-running state, military and gang violence, where civilians bear the brunt of a war driven as much by mineral wealth as ideology. Gold, cobalt, tantalum: the raw materials of all of our phones and laptops haunt the lives of those in the Congo, implicating a global audience in what might otherwise be framed as a distant crisis. When Goma falls to M23 rebels in January 2025, the speed of the collapse — four days — underscores the fragility of state power in a region saturated with militias, foreign troops, and the uneasy presence of the UN’s largest peacekeeping mission.
Sawasawa’s focus is not the spectacle of conflict but the extraordinary vitality of those forced to live within it. Markets are still open, women sell garlic and herbs, dance competitions are held and music is everywhere. The camera rests as much on gestures of care and endurance – which are, in and of themselves, their own form of resistance – as it does on the guns, the rage, and the devastation of the refugee camps.
Handheld sequences, chasing shots of men shooting into the skies, of fires raging over buildings and vehicles, are contrasted with wider, calmer stills of devastated landscapes or intimate portraits of the faces of those living within the camps. Enough Is Enough is in no way voyeuristic or sensationalist, and never reduces its subjects to victims. Rather, as Sawasawa commented in the Q&A at the end of the movie, ‘This is not a movie about the conflict, it is a movie from the conflict.’ It is his daily life, captured on film. This is a portrait of a society trapped in an “endless war”, fuelled by the violence of global capitalism and geopolitical neglect. Despite it all, however, Sawasawa declared that he still has hope.
At a festival that often foregrounds cinema’s political role, Enough Is Enough is a stark reminder that witnessing is no passive act. To watch is to recognise. Sawasawa does not offer solutions, nor an objective, Wikipedia-like historiography of the conflict of his country, rather, he asks that we watch and listen to the voices and stories and images of the reality of living, for decades, in conflict. A truly important film to watch.
Our team is on the ground at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival, running from February 12th to 22nd, 2026.
