Filmography
“All my work in film, from post–genocide Rwanda to extreme Antarctica to post–Sandinista Nicaragua, focuses on trying to understand our place in the world, in intellectual, political and social ways, as well as in emotional, visceral and almost cosmic ways. I strive to fathom how people who have been confronted to extremes coexist together, by capturing the raw emotions of those individuals and communities.
In order to address these big questions and have them be accessible to as many viewers as possible without compromising on the nuance and complexity of the issues at hand, I set myself to find strong narratives and compelling characters that bear poetic and artistic qualities and thus give each viewer the power to evoke this quest on their own terms.”
Turbulence
In her award-winning film career, Anne Aghion has travelled the world and borne witness to the lives of people who have survived the most extreme circumstances. In TURBULENCE, she grapples with the shadows cast over her own life — losing her mother when she was a child, and her father’s memories of life during the Holocaust. Through a series of tender, honest and visually stunning cinematic letters to her mother, she recounts her sometimes shocking odyssey in search of resolution and peace.
71 minutes / 2024
My Neighbor My Killer
Filming for over a decade in a tiny rural hamlet in post-genocide Rwanda, Anne Aghion has charted the impact the Gacaca Tribunals — an experiment in transitional justice where citizen-judges are meant to try their neighbors – has had on survivors and perpetrators alike. Through their fear and anger, accusations and defenses, blurry truths, inconsolable sadness, and hope for life renewed, she captures the emotional journey to coexistence. MY NEIGHBOR MY KILLER is the final feature-length companion of THE GACACA SERIES.
80 minutes / 2009
Official Selection Cannes Film Festival 2009
Best Documentary Nominee Gotham Awards 2009
Winner Human Rights Watch Nestor Almendros Award for Courage in Filmmaking 2009
Best Documentary Montréal Black Film Festival 2010
Gacaca, living together again in Rwanda?
Follow the first steps in one of the world’s boldest experiments in reconciliation: the Gacaca (Ga-CHA-cha) Tribunals. These are a new form of citizen-based justice aimed at unifying this country of 8 million people after the 1994 genocide which claimed over 800,000 lives in 100 days. While world attention is focused on the unfolding procedures, Anne Aghion bypasses the usual interviews with politicians and international aid workers, skips the statistics, and goes directly to the emotional core of the story, talking one-on-one with survivors and accused killers alike. In this powerful, compassionate and insightful film, with almost no narration, and using only original footage, she captures first-hand how ordinary people struggle to find a future after cataclysm. GACACA is the first film of THE GACACA SERIES.
55 minutes / 2003
Winner UNESCO Fellini Prize 2003
In Rwanda we say... The family that does not speak dies
Since 1999, Anne Aghion has traveled to rural Rwanda to chart the impact of that country’s efforts at ethnic reconciliation. IN RWANDA WE SAY… THE FAMILY THAT DOES NOT SPEAK DIES, her second film on the subject, continues Aghion’s quest to learn how the human spirit survives a trauma as unfathomable as the attempt, in 1994, to wipe out the Tutsi minority, with 800,000 lives claimed in 100 days. IN RWANDA WE SAY… is the next chapter in a fascinating and intimate look at how, and whether, people can overcome fear, hatred and deep emotional scars, to forge a common future after genocide.
54 minutes / 2004
Emmy Award-Winner 2005
The Notebooks of Memory
On a lush green Rwandan hillside, more than a decade after the 1994 genocide wiped out the Tutsi population, a small rural community gathers on the grass over and over again for the Gacaca (ga-CHA-cha) trials, a unique experiment in justice meant to bring unity back to this nation. In THE NOTEBOOKS OF MEMORY, the third film of THE GACACA SERIES, Anne Aghion spent four years following the process, as a tribunal of local citizen-judges weighs survivor accounts of the massacres against the testimony of perpretrators who barter confessions for reduced prison sentences.
53 minutes / 2009
Ice People
Unique in the genre of exploration and adventure films, ICE PEOPLE takes you on one of the earth’s most seductive journeys — Antarctica. Anne Aghion spent four months “on the ice” with modern-day polar explorers, finding out what drives this dedicated pursuit of science, capturing the true experience of living and working in this extreme environment, and witnessing one of the most significant discoveries about climate change in recent Antarctic science. The most authentic film about life on the ice since the trailblazing expeditions chronicled nearly a century ago, ICE PEOPLE conveys the vast beauty, the claustrophobia, the excitement and the stillness of an experience set to nature’s rhythm.
77 minutes / 2008
San Francisco International Film Festival 2009
Se le movió el piso - A portrait of Managua
Set in the heart of Managua, Nicaragua, SE LE MOVIO EL PISO explores the city’s deep scars left by the devastating 1972 earthquake, the 43-year Somoza dictatorship, and more than a decade of war. The film centers around the Salazar theater, a thirties architectural gem now inhabited by families who have become slum dwellers. Amidst the ruins and desolation, the film offers a poignant portrait of survival after political and natural disasters.
42 minutes / 1995
Coral Award for “Best Non-Latin American Documentary on Latin America” at the Havana Film Festival 1996