Of all the crimes committed in the name of colonialism and, more pointedly, the so-called ?scramble for Africa?, it is the story of the Congolese people that presents the most harrowing and darkest moment.

What is all the more shocking is that the country and its people are still in the grip of exploitations and hardships that have their roots in the behaviour visited upon the nation by Belgium?s King Leopold II from the 1880s onwards.

Tiny Belgium mostly missed out on the riches and global influence enjoyed by the European colonial powers that surrounded it, but King Leopold was determined he should have his share as the last of the European nations to seek a colony.

He found in the nation of Congo an unexploited country boasting some of the richest natural resources in Africa. Its people had no written language and its tribes were easily tricked or overpowered by King Leopold?s colonisers ? led by explorer Henry Morton Stanley. And so began a virtual wholesale ransacking of the country, firstly with ivory and diamonds the riches being shipped back to Antwerp and later rubber from deep within the vast country?s forests.

The natives who were forced to climb rubber vines to get rubber sap ? rubbing it onto their bodies where it solidified and was painfully pulled off at the end of the day ? could expect no mercy if they failed to reach their quotas. Hands were routinely chopped off for those not productive enough. Innocent women and children were also victims.

Over 108 minutes, this film by actress-turned-director Pippa Scott, traces the history and exploitation of the Congolese nation by King Leopold and later the Belgium state and even through interventions by the United Nations, the USA (which gathered much of the radioactive material from Congo to use in the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki), to today when the country?s poor workers risk their health excavating the radioactive mineral coltan to be used in the cell phone and computer industry.

This harrowing film draws on Adam Hochschild?s book King Leopold?s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. It includes a wealth of film footage, photos and contemporaneous journals that reveal the truth about what has happened in Congo ? through its incarnations as Belgian Congo, Zaire and the Democratic Republic of the Congo ? during the past 130 years. As long ago as 1890 journalist George Washington Williams coined the phrase ?crimes against humanity? as he exposed the slavery, torture and evil acts being visited on the Congolese people by their colonial masters.

There is little respite from the horrors that unfold throughout this film; only near the end is there recognition of some of the benefits that also came alongside the colonial impositions ? such as schools and education. But audiences will be struck by the terrible price this nation has paid, and continues to pay, simply for being home to such fantastic natural riches and resources. Narrators Don Cheadle, Alfre Woodard and James Cromwell give necessary gravitas to the story they tell. This film is promoted as ?the story a king and a country didn?t want told? ? it is a story that all of humanity needs to know, to atone and ensure the suffering of the Congolese is no longer perpetuated by the greed of exploiters.