God Loves Uganda

Directors:

RaMell Ross
Roger Ross Williams

Status: COMPLETED
2013

How did we help:
  • Development
  • Production
  • Outreach
  • Good Pitch

Director RaMell Ross
Director Roger Ross Williams
Completed 2013 Runtime 83


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SYNOPSIS

God Loves Uganda explores the role of the American evangelical movement in Uganda, where American missionaries have been credited with both creating schools and hospitals and promoting dangerous religious bigotry. The film follows evangelical leaders in America and Uganda along with politicians and missionaries as they attempt the radical task of eliminating “sexual sin” and converting Ugandans to fundamentalist Christianity.

Long Synopsis: God Loves Uganda explores the role of the American evangelical movement in Uganda, where American missionaries have been credited with both creating schools and hospitals and promoting dangerous religious bigotry. The film follows evangelical leaders in America and Uganda along with politicians and missionaries as they attempt the radical task of eliminating “sexual sin” and converting Ugandans to fundamentalist Christianity.

As an American influenced bill to make homosexuality punishable by death wins widespread support, tension in Uganda mounts and an atmosphere of murderous hatred takes hold. The film reveals the conflicting motives of faith and greed, ecstasy and egotism, among Ugandan ministers, American evangelical leaders and the foot soldiers of a theology that sees Uganda as a test case, ground zero in a battle not for millions, but billions of souls.

Through verite, interviews, and hidden camera footage - and with unprecedented access - God Loves Uganda takes viewers inside the evangelical movement in both the US and Uganda. It features Lou Engle, the creator of The Call, which brings tens of thousands of believers together to pray against sexual sin. It provides a rare view of the most powerful evangelical minister in Uganda, who lives in a mansion where he’s served by a white coated chef. It goes into a Ugandan church where a preacher whips a congregation into mass hysteria with anti-gay rhetoric. It records the culture clash between enthusiastic Midwestern missionaries and world weary Ugandans. It features a heartbreaking interview with gay activist David Kato shortly before he was murdered. It tells the moving story of Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, a minister excommunicated, ostracized and literally spat on for being tolerant and his remarkable campaign for peace and healing in Uganda. Shocking, horrifying, touching and enlightening, God Loves Uganda will make you question what you thought you knew about religion.

Outreach Work Supported

Lobbying, screenings and coalition building.


What people
have said

A vitally important film that hopefully will also serve as a reminder to the U.S. LGBTQ movement that complacency about our hard-won freedoms is far from being a global thing. Far from it.

Windy City Times

"God Loves Uganda" approaches this intersection of faith and politics with some fairness and a good deal of outrage.

New York Times
Watch the
trailer here

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