In the wake of the 1994 genocide, Franco-American director Anne Aghion shot footage in Rwanda from 2001 to 2009
When peace comes, how do you make it right again? How can life be reinvented? What kind of justice can be done? Anne Aghion enables us to witness the emotional journey in search of coexistence. She immerses herself in the experience of reconciliation and justice, focusing particularly on the role of the Gacaca (pronounced ga-CHA-cha) - community tribunals set up to judge crimes of genocide – and the way they operate.
This ten-year incursion into Rwanda to record the first-hand accounts of those who escaped, of survivors, of attackers and of victims, has enabled the making of films of outstanding documentary value. The trials, the defendants, the witnesses and the judges... the minutes of silence... the information and the accounts, the reading out of notebooks... the battles of oratory eloquence and the altercations... the verdicts...
Using the footage that portrays the setting up and operation of the Gacacas, Anne Aghion has made three documentary films: Gacaca, Living Together Again in Rwanda? (awarded the UNESCO Fellini Prize), In Rwanda we say… The family that does not speak dies (Emmy Award in 2005), The Notebooks of Memory, and a full-length documentary My Neighbour My Killer, selected for the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
Anne Aghion’s companies Gacaca Productions and Dry Valley have placed all the rushes from the filming in Ina’s care: 550 cassettes representing some 350 hours of footage. The interviews are filmed in the original languages, which include Kinyarwanda, English and French.
Ina was eager to provide its assistance in preserving and exploiting the footage shot by Anne Aghion over the ten-year period. This is a concrete example of Ina’s policy of enriching its collections and fostering international cooperation in the preservation of the audiovisual heritage.
