In Rwanda we say...
The family that does not speak dies
Emmy Award-winner (2005)
This second film in Anne Aghion's series on Gacaca justice in Rwanda looks at the impact of the return of a prisoner to his community before his trial. (2004)
"Astonishing"—The Washington Post
"Recommended!"—Educational Media Reviews Online
"Extraordinary"—Variety
“Universal theater. Riveting"—Le Monde
"Cover ground not covered"—The Villager
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Since 1999, award-winning filmmaker Anne Aghion has traveled to rural Rwanda, to chart the impact of that country’s efforts at ethnic reconciliation. In Rwanda we say… The family that does not speak dies, her second film on the subject, continues Aghion’s quest to learn how the human spirit survives a trauma as unfathomable as the attempt, in 1994, to wipe out the Tutsi minority, with 800,000 lives claimed in 100 days. In Rwanda we say… is the next chapter in a fascinating and intimate look at how, and whether, people can overcome fear, hatred and deep emotional scars, to forge a common future after genocide.
Aghion’s influential 2002 film, Gacaca, Living Together Again in Rwanda? captured the feelings of both survivors and alleged killers in the remote community of Ntongwe, just as the government was announcing the Gacaca (ga-CHA-cha), a new system of citizen-based justice intended to handle over 100,000 genocide suspects languishing in detention. In Rwanda we say… returns two years later as close to 16,000 of these suspects, still untried, are released across the country: having confessed to their crimes, and served the maximum sentence the Gacaca will eventually impose, suspects of appalling crimes are sent home to plow fields and fetch water alongside the people they are accused of victimizing.
In Rwanda we say… focuses on the release of one suspect, and the effect of his return on this tiny hillside hamlet. While the government’s message of a “united Rwandan family” infiltrates the language of the community, reactions to this imposed co-existence reel from numb acceptance to repressed rage. Violence seems to lurk just below the surface. What unfolds, however, is an astonishing testament to the liberating power of speech: little by little, people begin to talk in a profound and articulate way – first to the camera, and then to each other -- as these neighbors negotiate the emotional task of accepting life side by side.
Color – 54’ – In Kinyarwanda with English subtitles.
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"With extraordinary sensitivity, Aghion takes us into the heart of the problem of reconciliation in a post-genocidal society - not with wordy abstractions but with the earthy, real expressions of the people, victims and accused criminals, who must try to live together. Those seeking to know whether reconciliation is possible in Rwanda must look for their answer in this compelling expression of Rwandan voices."
—Alison des Forges, Senior Advisor to Human Rights Watch, Africa
"Aghion has taken her camera deep into Rwandan life, to chronicle how the country's survivors and perpetrators are trying to live together anew. The narrative is carried by the tension that shows plainly in the faces of Aghion's subjects, in their difficult but always poetic words, in their long silences, in the haunting thunder and rain that roar over the deeply rural and impoverished place called Gafumba. There are no bodies in Aghion's films. Her work focuses on life after the genocide, on the lives of the living."
—The Washington Post.