My Neighbor My Killer (2009)

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• Project Phase: Completed
• Release Date: 2009-00-00 -
• Distributor(s): 
• Film Genre(s): Documentary
• Country: United States
• 

SYNOPSIS

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. Officially announced in 2001, and ending this year, the government put in place the Gacaca (ga-CHA-cha) 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, in MY NEIGHBOR MY KILLER, Anne Aghion charts the impact of the Gacaca on survivors and perpetrators alike. Through their fear and anger, accusations and defenses, blurry truths, inconsolable sadness, and hope for life renewed, she documents an emotional journey to coexistence.

Returning over and over to this one community, from the time the idea of the Gacaca was first presented to the population through to the local trials, yielded over 350 hours of footage. Along the way, Aghion created an award-winning series of one-hour films which have been seen around the world and are recognized as a unique and seminal body of work on a community in transition after conflict. The titles include Gacaca, Living Together Again In Rwanda?, winner of the 2003 Unesco Fellini Prize, the 2005 Emmy-winner In Rwanda We Say…The family that does not speak dies, and the newly completed The Notebooks of Memory.

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