Mission Congo

Feature Documentary – 70 minutes

Directed by Lara Zizic and David Turner

Toronto Film Festival, DOC NYC, and IDFA/Amsterdam

Mission Congo explores how, during the massive refugee crisis following the genocide in Rwanda, televangelist Pat Robertson’s for-profit African Development Company used substantial resources, intended for humanitarian relief, for Robertson’s own diamond mining venture.

Mission Congo provides a deep dive into how Robertson used his organization, Operation Blessing, as a platform to mislead viewers of “The 700 Club” into making donations to the group, which it pledged would be used to aid and provide resources to refugees who fled from Rwanda to the Democratic Republic Of Congo

With an extraordinary cast of eyewitnesses – including foreign-aid workers an journalists – Mission Congo takes viewers on a mesmerizing journey, exposing how instead of providing humanitarian aid, Operation Blessing cargo planes were most often used to haul diamond-mining equipment hundreds of miles away to a diamond mine owned by Pat Robertson.

The film also raises larger questions about the huge sums of money raised by American religious institutions and televangelists that go untaxed and unregulated.

© 2013 c-colony productions