Ben’Imana
This year’s Cannes Caméra d’Or winner is an unflinching, deeply felt portrait of a community seeking justice, and closure, in the wake of genocide.
It’s 2012 in Kibeho, a rural village in the mountains of south Rwanda. Though it’s been a generation since the 1994 genocide, people haven’t stopped seeking justice, and community-led Gacaca tribunals – more village assembly than formal trial – are ongoing. Vénéranda, who is deeply committed to the reconciliation process, has been asked to publicly forgive the man who killed most of her family, but her sister Suzanne is outraged at the suggestion. Meanwhile, Vénéranda has just learned with dismay that her daughter Tina is unexpectedly pregnant, news that complicates her commitment to healing and deepens her own reckoning with the past.
A decade in the making, Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s debut film is a humanist portrait of the legacy of genocide and the challenges of reconciliation. Working largely with non-professional actors and drawing deeply from interviews with victims and recorded Gacaca testimonies, it deftly evokes the difficulty of moving on as individuals and communities. Blessed with an incandescent turn from Isabelle Kabano as the seething Suzanne, this is a profoundly intimate story of a nation still reckoning with its past
“A feat of cinematic wonder and community collaboration … Rich characterisation, painterly cinematography and a profound understanding of the tricksy machinations of trauma drive this must-see debut feature.” – BFI
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