FEATURE FILM

My Neighbor My Killer

SHOWTIMES
Sunday, April 25, 1:30 pm, Athena Cinema
Wednesday, April 28, 5:30 pm, Athena Cinema
Thursday, April 29, 7:45 pm, Athena Cinema

Director: Anne Aghion
Rating: Not Rated
Runtime: 80 min.
U.S.A., France
In English and Kinyarwanda English subtitles

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.

“Perhaps the most striking thing about the film is the deep wisdom, sad emotional maturity, and even poetry that seems to issue effortlessly from the mouths of the victims”
—Peter Brunette, Hollywood Reporter