Professor Sean Hawkins (Professor of History, University of Toronto) introduces tonight’s film, My Neighbour, My Killer, a compassionate exploration into the open air hearings, which started as a social experiment in collective healing after the Rwandan genocide.
Award-winning filmmaker Anne Aghion follows this process — called Gacaca — and the impact it has on a small hamlet over the period of a decade. The raw anger and emotional wounds that may never heal are visible and difficult to witness. It becomes clear that there is no simple solution to reconciliation. Both the victims and perpetrators understand that the path to co-existence will be long and difficult, and this gripping documentary follows this journey with compassion and conscience.

Professor Sean Hawkins, tonight’s special guest, is a specialist in the social and cultural history of sub-Saharan Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. His work has focused on such topics as identity, political authority, religion, medicine, colonial law, and marriage; these were brought together in his recent book Writing and Colonialsim in North Ghana: The Encounter between the LoDagaa and “the World on Paper”, 1982-1992 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002). He is also interested in the history of African identity, both on the continent and within the wider diaspora. This interest led to a collection of essays co-edited with Philip D. Morgan, The Black Experience of the Empire, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), which is a companion volume to the Oxford History of the British Empire. Finally, he is working on a set of pedagogical and publishing projects highlighting the African contribution to the Western idea and practice of freedom.

My Neighbor, My Killer screens at 8 PM at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario. For more information or to purchase tickets, please call the TIFFG Box Office at 416-968-FILM or toll-free 1-877-968-FILM. Tickets can also be purchased online at tiff.net/cinematheque or in person at the theatre.

Rwanda faces this struggle. In 1999, five years after more than half a million Tutsis were brutally murdered by Rwandan Hutus, the government introduced Gacaca – a process where open air hearings and citizen judges try members of the community for atrocities they committed.

This social experiment permitted confessed genocide killers to leave prison and return to their homes amongst surviving Tutsis. Survivors are asked to forgive them and resume living next door to those who may have raped or killed members of their own family.

Award-winning filmmaker Anne Aghion follows this process and the impact it has on a small hamlet over the period of a decade. The raw anger and emotional wounds that may never heal are visible and difficult to witness. It becomes clear that there is no simple solution to reconciliation. Both the victims and perpetrators understand that the path to coexistence will be long and difficult, and this gripping documentary follows this journey with compassion and conscience.

Program Notes by Alex Rogalski