Film : Français, américain
Genre : Documentaire
Durée : 1h 20min
Date de sortie : Prochainement
Réalisation : Anne Aghion
En 1994, le génocide des Tutsis par les Hutus a laissé le Rwanda physiquement et psychologiquement très fragile. La loi Gacaca mandate alors les Tutsis et les Hutus à se réconcilier pour reconstruire la nation. Anne Aghion a passé neuf ans durant le processus de paix pour réaliser ce documentaire.
(L'avis exprimé par les rédacteurs de cette rubrique est indépendant du travail et des choix du Jury oecuménique.)
14 mai 2009
Anne Aghion has made a film about Nicaragua in the past and Antarctica in the present. In the meantime, for nine years, she has been filming on and off in Rwanda and produced three hour-long documentaries on the aftermath of the1994 genocide. This time she has made an 80 minute film on the Gacaca Tribunals set up by the Rwandan government in 2001 where open air hearings bring the accused and the survivors together, with ’citizen-judges who try their neighbours and rebuild the nation’. Is this possible ?
The crew spent much of the time between 2003 and 2008 in the village of Gafumba taking 350 hours of footage. Clearly, there is a great deal of material where the women remember and still grieve. One woman says that her seven children were killed in front of her and her baby torn from her back and beaten to death. They let her live because she had become a person of suffering and sorrow and would die. How can this be forgiven ?
Several of the Hutu killers also speak, describing their guard tours around their villages to suppress the Tutsis or admitting the atrocities they committed. We hear some of the sentences and the reasons, the appeals for clemency and the release of those who had served their sentences.
Where this film is more powerful and horrifying than most is not in the presentation of violence – no visuals, only verbal descriptions – but in the reality of gazing with the camera lens at the testimonies of the men and women on both sides, listening to the stories, knowing that nothing can be undone and always puzzling on how the burdens of grief and the burdens of guilt can be reconciled.
No white person appears on screen. There is no voiceover. Yes, it is edited, but it is also well-documented testimony.
