Not Ours To Carry

Filmscreening | Sat 21.11.2026, 5 pm

Between 2020 and 2022, sexual violence was used on a vast scale against women and girls in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, in a war the world barely watched. Not Ours to Carry follows three Tigrayan women who refuse to let that silence stand. Birhan left engineering for humanitarian work and sits with survivors as they speak, often for the first time. Berkti, a former fighter, takes on the stigma that pushes survivors out of their churches and marriages, starting with the men in her own community. Rita, a British Tigrayan of Irob heritage, gathered testimony in refugee camps in Sudan and carried it to the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, only to watch accountability slip away. Told in their words and brought to life through hand-drawn Tigrayan animation by Gabrielle Tesfaye, the film asks what justice means when institutions fail, and what the rest of us owe the women who have been left to carry it.

38 minutes, English subtitles.
Screening followed by a moderated discussion.

Veronica Blecker is a Swedish-Swiss documentary filmmaker based in London whose work centres women's voices. Before founding Raccoon Media in 2023, she spent years making films for NGOs across Africa, Europe and the US, and was the sole filmmaker documenting ABBA during ABBA Voyage. 

Seblework Lemma is a Tigrayan producer and women’s rights advocate, and co-producer of Not Ours to Carry. She lived in Tigray through the 2020 to 2022 war and guided how the film represents the Tigrayan community, ensuring the story was told on the community’s own terms. She founded Gorzo, a non-profit in Tigray working on women’s empowerment and gender equality through awareness campaigns, education and community projects. She is now based in Dublin.

Raccoon Media is a London-based production company making documentaries about the stories and people the world overlooks, with a focus on women's lives and human rights.