Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival

 
My Neighbor, My Killer
Director: Anne Aghion
Country: USA
Year: 2009
Runtime: 80 minutes
Genre: Documentary
Screening Times: Sunday, February 28, 8:00 p.m.
 
Buy tickets from Cinematheque Ontario
 
Synopsis:
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.
 
Director’s Biography:
Multiple award-winning filmmaker Anne Aghion has been praised as a documentarian who succeeds in conveying a strong sense of the people and places she covers. Her films have received accolades around the world—including EMMY and UNESCO Fellini Awards for her work documenting the Rwandan Gacaca. Anne is currently at work completing her series on the Gacaca, and also recently released Ice People, a feature-length documentary that explores the physical, emotional and spiritual adventure of living and conducting science in Antarctica
 
Film Festivals:
San Francisco International Film Festival, San Francisco, USA, April 2009
Cannes Film Festival, Cannes, France, May 2009
Silver Docs Documentary Film Festival, Washington, DC, June 2009
Human Rights Watch Intl Film Festival, NYC, June 2009
Vancouver Intl Film Festival, Vancouver, Canada, October 2009
Chicago Intl Film Festival, Chicago, USA, October 2009
Palm Sprints International Film Festival, Palm Springs, USA, January 2010
Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Toronto, Canada, February 2010
 
Awards:
Human Rights Watch Nestor Almendros Prize for “Courage in Filmmaking”
 
Media Coverage:
Hollywood Reporter: My Neighbor, My Killer – Film Review
New York Times: Side by side with the guilty, after courts send them home
Screen Daily: My Neighbor, My Killer – Film Review
The Huffington Post: My Neighbor, My Killer Director Anne Aghion on Rwanda
 
Official Film Website:
Gacaca Films
 
Overview by Julie Giles