Munyurangabo at Anthology Film Archives

The 1994 Rwandan genocide, like the Holocaust to which it is so often compared, is one of those events that is impossible to adequately capture on film, so paralyzing is the extent of its horror. But as the children born of the genocide become old enough to have their own children, the more pressing concern is to understand Rwanda as it is right now, which is the aim of the quietly powerful movie Munyurangabo, currently playing at Anthology Film Archives, in the East Village.

Munyurangabo, which was directed by the American filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung, tells the story of two friends, one Tutsi (Munyurangabo) and one Hutu (Sangwa), on their way from Kigali to the countryside to kill the genocidaire responsible for the death of 'Ngabo's father. It is a road movie in an entirely new key: the main action and terrible journeys happened years ago and the protagonists want only to find something that will hold them in place. In the Q-and-A afterward, Chung said that his inability to speak Kinyarwanda became an asset when making the movie, as he and his cast were forced to overcome that barrier in other ways, and Munyurangabo reflects this in its meaningful silences and meditative images. Shot in just eleven days and with a non-professional cast who improvised many of their lines, the film is awkward at times, but its story of people desperate to salvage their present by making sense of their past is absorbing and earnestly, deeply humane.

Photo: thanks