synopsis • praise • screenings • credits • press

Gacaca... Living Together Again in Rwanda?

Unesco Fellini Prize, September, 2003

''What I find extraordinary about Anne's film is that she stayed around and listened long enough. The kind of attention that Rwanda has received after the genocide has been dominated by people who came from the outside, who formed quick judgments about good guys and bad guys.''
—As told to The New York Times, by Alison des Forges, senior adviser to Human Rights Watch

“Seminal…” and “an impressive docu…”
—Variety

“[A] remarkable film…”
—Le Nouvel Observateur

“Anne Aghion’s riveting documentary clearly shows the uniqueness and the limitations of this unprecedented experiment… She questions survivors and executioners in a humble and precise way… In the end, we come out with more questions than answers, and that is why this film is so interesting.”
—Libération

“A remarkable documentary…”
—Télécable & Satellite Hebdo

“Anne Aghion films without any preconceptions. With an open, human approach, she wants to understand how one lives with ‘what happened.’”
—Le Monde

“…Don't hesitate for a moment to watch this… An essential film…”
—Radio Suisse Romande

“A fine film which will fuel many lively discussions”
—Educational Media Reviews Online

from the experts

“The film captures quite precisely much of what is most compelling and unsettling about Rwanda’s quest for justice after genocide – and, more: it captures the feel of Rwanda, the landscape, the texture of the place, the rhythm of speech and movement, the weird brilliance of colors amid the gloom of the spirit. The sense of being there came across so vividly that at times, while watching the film, I found myself having strong smell memories.”
—Philip Gourevitch, New Yorker staff writer. Author of the multiple award-winning bestseller, “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, Stories from Rwanda.”

“This is the most nuanced and intelligent film I have seen to date on Rwanda after the genocide.”
—Alison des Forges, Senior Adviser to Human Rights Watch. Author of "Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda", hailed as 'the most extensive and authoritative account of the Rwanda genocide yet published.' 1999 recipient of a MacArthur Fellows grant for her Human Rights work.

"This is an excellent film… It totally avoids the pitfalls so many documentaries fall into: either the pornography of violence and death, with lots of gory pictures of decomposed bodies; or the succession of experts expounding on the case and interpreting for us what the smart position on the matter is or ought to be. None of that here: only Rwandans who speak.
" Rwandans are a people who would perform very badly on an afternoon talk show: no screaming here, not even any crying, almost no public display of emotion. But this makes you feel the intensity of what they are living with all the more… The courage and the strength, the loneliness and the doubts of these survivors of genocide: they have rarely been documented with such straightforward respect.
" The film does a good job of explaining very complicated matters in a simple way... And yet, the documentary maker managed to avoid presenting a biased or incomplete picture of the challenge of justice…"
—Peter Uvin, Director, Institute for Human Security, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. Author of “Aiding Violence, the Development Enterprise in Rwanda.” Consultant on the Gacaca and other issues of international cooperation for the Belgian Secretary of State for International Development, the European Union and the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs, among others.

Film trilogy on the Gacaca in Rwanda

To reveal the complex process of achieving co-existence after killings of cataclysmic proportions, the final film in this trilogy on the Gacaca justice and reconstruction process in Rwanda focuses on the weekly pre-trial hearings leading up to the community-based Gacaca trials in the same rural hillside community that Aghion’s two previous films focused on.

This essential last chapter in the trilogy will be completed in early 2009, in time for special event screenings during the 15th year commemoration of the Rwandan genocide. Learn more.

screenings

In Rwanda We Say… and Gacaca are at the 2008 Cinema Verite Festival in Paris! Oct. 10–12, 2008.

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