Helping Rwanda to Weep

It is well directed by Michael, but that tension isn’t something we struggled to dramatize. That's how it was. Did you manage to observe the audience during the Rwanda screening?

I visited various parts of the stands. We’d debated about whether we should show the film there at all—did we have the right to make people go back to that time? But Rwandans relive their memories every day. There is such a powerful sense that the violence of 12 years ago still exists. The violence, the horror and the guilt all continue to commingle. You can’t walk down a street in Kigali without knowing that horrible things happened there. Neighbors turned on neighbors, family members turned on family members. And it is hard for them to know where to place the blame. On government ideologues? On the West? The booze? The impoverishment of your country? On yourself? So we have to offer new ways of managing these memories. That is the role of the Rwanda tribunal, of the books that have been published, and now of feature films. There is an old expression: the Rwandan man only weeps on the inside, into his belly. We are trying to help people to weep on the outside. And how did people respond?

People said, "Thank you for bringing this film here." Many were survivors from the school where the film is set. It was extraordinary to see such people completely enthralled. They were very pleased by how visually accurate it was: the way people dressed, the way they walked. There were moments when I thought we’d cause more uproar than we did. Parts of the film are brutal—not gratuitously, but tough to watch. Some scenes affected people as they would in the West. But there is a scene at a roadblock that I thought would horrify people more than it did. The fact is, Rwandans know it. Their reaction was more "You got that right" than "That was horrific." But more importantly, people were genuinely emotional. They cried and then wept. It was, in that sense, truly cathartic. If you were remaking the film now, would you do anything differently?

There are small things. But we told the right story, primarily to show the West where it failed Rwanda. It is also important that Rwandans know that this particular story is being told. Why is it that we always hear "never again" when it comes to such horrific crimes, and yet we've had Cambodia’s killing fields, Rwanda’s genocide, and now the mass killings in Sudan’s Darfur?

If you have something the West wants, they’ll stop such things before they happen. But if you’re poor and black, then you’re on your own. There is an inclination in the West not to get involved unless there is a vested interest. Until they take a moral interest, there will be more Darfurs, more Rwandas. But one encouraging thing is that people under 30 see this film differently. They are emotionally blown away by it, but they also have a sense of outrage. Some have turned on me and said, "You were there. How could you have allowed this to happen?" If we can inform people enough about the way we behaved, and if they can find the moral probity to tell politicians that they aren’t doing enough, maybe we can truly mean “never again.”

© 2006