Ntarabana
"Trauma is somewhat alleviated when the tragedy is collective," says Anastasie Murekaze. The tragedy she speaks of took place between the 6th of April and the 4th of July 1994, when incited Hutus started killing in Rwanda. They were after their compatriots, Tutsis and moderate Hutus, of whom more than one million eventually died.
At the risk of their own lives, Rugwiza Froduald and Mukankundiye Anne-Marie tried to protect Tutsis during the genocide by offering them a hiding place in Ntarabana in northern Rwanda.
In this documentary, Belgian-Cameroonian director François L. Woukoache primarily wants to listen to the stories and try to understand something of the horror that held the country in its grip at the time. He gives viewers pauses to breathe showing surreal landscape stills, accompanied by whispered consolation chants, bird songs and the blowing of the wind. Difficult as it may be, Murekaze has forgiven the perpetrators.
Made possible thanks to the Institut français Paris and the Institut français des Pays-Bas.
Pre-film:
Machini
Tétshim and Frank Mukunday | Congo, Belgium | 2019 | 10' | French spoken | English subtitles
A stop-motion short about the influence that mining has on the city. About the pollution and the slow destruction of man by man.
FRANÇOIS L. WOUKOACHE (1966, Cameroon) is a director and writer known for his 1995 documentary Asientos, the feature Fragments de vie (2000) and his 2001 documentary Nous ne sommes plus morts. His latest film, the documentary feature Ntarabana, is the concluding part of a triptych on Rwanda post-1994 made up of the three films Nous ne sommes plus morts, Icyizere and Ntarabana.
