Photos of a Gacaca justice process in Rwanda

Film trilogy on the Gacaca in Rwanda

To reveal the complex process of achieving co-existence after killings of cataclysmic proportions, this upcoming third film 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. Shot over the course of three years, through the narratives of killers, bystanders and survivors—most of whom have known each other since they were children—spoken at the weekly Gacaca hearings, the film contrasts the collective historical record with the individually narrated experiences of the protagonists. 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.

Upcoming film

The Swiss Development Cooperation continues to support my work with a new grant in 2008. Oxfam-Novib has also recently came on board as a major funder of the third film—which has also received support from the Compton Foundation, the United States Institute of Peace, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Peter S. Reed Foundation and the Berner Family Foundation. Other in-kind support includes the Hotel Novotel Umubano in Kigali, which has supported the production of my work in Rwanda since the very beginning.

Film 1 (2002)
Gacaca, Living Together Again in Rwanda?

Film 2 (2004)
In Rwanda we say...The family that does not speak dies

The final film is will be available soon. Stay connected.

“It is truly impressive how well your films are received by such diverse audiences.”
—Taylor Seybolt, Program Officer, United States Institute of Peace

“Aghion has taken her camera deep into Rwandan life, to chronicle how the country's survivors and perpetrators are trying to live together anew… The narrative is carried by the tension that shows plainly in the faces of Aghion's subjects, in their difficult but always poetic words, in their long silences, in the haunting thunder and rain that roar over the deeply rural and impoverished place called Gafumba… There are no bodies in Aghion's films. Her work focuses on life after the genocide, on the lives of the living.”—The Washington Post

“The filmmaker’s taste and restraint has resulted in two of the most remarkable documentaries you are likely to see this year.”—The Connecticut Post

support

You can make tax deductible donations for the third film in Rwanda, Gacaca: The Trials at Women Make Movies — the fiscal sponsor for the Rwanda and Ice People projects. Donations can be made directly on the WMM website.