Ann Aghion
Could you ever forgive the people who slaughtered your family? In 1994, hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutus were incited to wipe out the country¡¯s Tutsi minority. From the crowded capital to the smallest village, local ¡®patrols¡¯ massacred lifelong friends and family members, most often with machetes and improvised weapons. Announced in 2001, and ending this year, the government put in place the Gacaca Tribunals-open-air hearings with citizen-judges meant to try their neighbors and rebuild the nation. As part of this experiment in reconciliation, confessed genocide killers are sent home from prison, while traumatized survivors are asked to forgive them and resume living side-by-side. Filming for close to a decade in a tiny hamlet, award-winning filmmaker Anne Aghion has charted the impact of Gacaca 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.
Ann Aghion
Anne Aghion holds a degree in Arab Language and Literature from Barnard College at Columbia University in New York and is the recipient of a 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship. Before she started to make films she worked for¡º The New York Times¡», and¡º the International Herald Tribune¡»in Paris. Her other films on Rwanda, Gacaca, Living Together Again In Rwanda? (2003, Unesco Fellini Prize) and 2005 Emmy-winner In Rwanda We Say... The Family That Does Not Speak Dies have aired on ARTE, on Sundance Channel and on television networks around the world. My Neighbor My Killer (2009)Ice People (2008) The Family That Does Not Speak Dies (2004) Gacaca, Living Together Again In Rwanda? (2002) Se le movió el piso: A portrait of Managua (1995)
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