My Neighbor, My Killer
80' (Rwanda)
Director/Producer:  Anne Aghion

Description:

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, an award-winning filmmaker 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.

Biography:

Anne Aghion has been praised by critics as a documentarian who succeeds in conveying a strong sense of the people and places she covers. She is a filmmaker whose awards include an Emmy, a UNESCO Fellini Prize and a Guggenheim fellowship. Aghion’s first film, The Earth Moved Under Him—A Portrait of Managua explored how slum dwellers in Nicaragua’s capital had survived a series of natural, political and economic disasters. Her latest film, Ice People explores the physical, emotional and spiritual adventure of doing science in Antarctica. Aghion has been a dual resident of New York and Paris. She spent the first eight years of her career in both editorial and administrative capacities at The New York Times Paris bureau, and at the International Herald Tribune. Moving into film, she worked in a variety of capacities including videographer, production and post-production manager with Richard Leacock and Valérie Lalonde, and Judith Abitbol, and for documentaries aired on networks such as Canal+ and ARTE.

Contact Information:

Gacaca Productions
PO Box 1528
New York, NY 10276
E-mail: anneaghion@gmail.com
Web site: www.myneighbormykiller.com