Anne Aghion’s My Neighbor, My Killer

Screening: Sat June 20: 6:30*screening followed by reception: Intro/Q&A with filmmaker and Bruni Burres, former HRWIFF director.
Mon June 22: 8:45 and Wed June 24: 4 **Intro/Q&A with filmmaker

Turning on My Neighbor, My Killer you know you aren’t in for a pleasant journey but you know that you’re doing something important.  The film follows one small Rwandan community at it attempts to get past genocide and the murders that took place in areas that Hutu and Tutsi’s both lived in.   For the community, the way in which justice is moved forward is with open-air hearings called Gacaca (it means justice on the grass) that have citizen-judges.

In this system confessed genocide killers are sent home from prison and the deeply affected survivors have to decide whether or not to forgive them while living side-by-side with them.

My Neighbor, My Killer focuses on two women,  Felicite Nyirasangwa and Euphrasie Mukarwemera, both widows, and their attempts to come to terms with the past.  Both women were Hutus that were married to Tutsi men, meaning that their children were considered also Tutsi and therefore met a violent end during the genocide.

It is a daunting task to listen to the women talk about what happened to their families but as the film progresses you really begin to understand why the work Aghion is doing is so important. Watching the women confront the men that took so much from them is pretty extraordinary and it’s a really empowering feeling to see women standing up for themselves and asking for the wrongs done to them to be remedied.

Not surprisingly the film was awarded the 2009 Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking. In order to make the film Aghion spent 10 years documenting the impact of Gacaca for both survivors and perpetrators.  And I for one am glad she did and hope that people take the time to leave their comfort zone and watch a community as it tries to heal.