Friday, 26 June 2009
My Neighbor, My Killer, a new movie about the aftermath of theRwandan genocide, is winning high praise from critics, and fillinghouses at film festivals. Agence-France Presse calls it "superbly shot"and "a historic document of incalculable value." At the 2009 HumanRights Watch International Film Festival at Lincoln Center in New YorkCity, director Anne Aghion received the Nestor Almendros courage infilmmaking award, recognizing her decade of work documenting Rwanda’spainful struggle towards a new beginning.
Filmmaker Anne AghionMy Neighbor, MyKiller, like director Anne Aghion's three earlier Rwanda films, is set in a rural community,Gafumba, where Hutu killers and Tutsi survivors must live together again. Shebegan filming six years after the 1994 genocide when more than 800,000 peoplewere murdered."Certainly, at the beginning I didn't realizewhat I was embarking on, or how hard it would be, or how long it would take,"Aghion said of the nearly ten years she spent documenting the reconciliationprocess called Gacaca, a system of open-air community trials wherevictims testified and killers were judged.Everyone understood the necessity of Gacaca, Aghionsaid, to help Rwanda rebuild and survive. "It's a very densely populated country, the plots of land are very small,and people see each other every day, all the time, they cross each other goingto get water at the well, or going to plow their fields or whatever, and theyjust have to rely on each other so much," she said.Most of the survivors ofthe genocide who speak in the film are women, including Hutu women who weremarried to Tutsi men. "So they don't fit anywhere," Aghion said. "They're notembraced by survivors as being one of them, and they're often rejected by theirown families. Certainly when the killings happened, in some cases it was peoplefrom their family who did the killing, and massacred their husbands andchildren."Annonciata Mukanyonga in “My Neighbor, My Killer”Sitting in her smallhouse, Annonciata Mukanyonga tellsthe filmmakers how almost every other Tutsi in her community was killed,including her husband and children."Everyone was fleeing anddying alone," she says. "When I had nowhere left to turn, I returned here toperish. That's when they killed my children, even the baby off my back. Andthey said, 'Leave her alone, she is sadness incarnate. She will die ofsorrow.'"When the women face the killers at the Gacacahearings, they don't ask for vengeance, only for the truth. The men on trialtry to minimize their role in the genocide, but must accept the verdict of thejudges. Many have already been jailed for years, and are allowed now to returnto the community. Aghion says mostdidn't strike her as remorseful. But, she said, "Some are more sort of stone-faced than others. And some of them you get asense that they might be reintegrated into society, that the group might beable to pull them back in."A man found guilty signing the judgment papersAghion says she isn't surehow successful the Gacaca hearings will be, or if the urge towards ethnicgenocide will ever recur in Rwanda."It's too early to tellwhether the Gacaca are going to work over the long term, whether time is takingits course and things are just calmer in people's hearts and minds," she said. "I just hope this film is seen widely and that it helps a little bit inbringing about conversation and discussion around issues of coexistence."Towards that end, Aghion, who lives in New York, she says will soon take MyNeighbor, My Killer to Rwanda, as she has her previous films about Gacaca, toshow to the people she interviewed, and other Rwandans. |
Friday, 26 June 2009
VOA News
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