After last year’s successful launch of the Rwanda Film Festival that saw an overwhelming number of people attend the screening, Kwetu Film Institute deemed it necessary to carry on free public screenings.

According to Eric Kabera, the founding director of Kwetu Film Festival, the main objective is to promote and encourage awareness, appreciation and understanding of the art of cinema in Rwanda.

"This is an educational platform where we use movies to educate the public. When we invite people we learn from others and from ourselves and we want to project that. Our aim is to present the most outstanding films produced in every part of the world to Rwandan audiences and project our history,” he said.

The public screening that involves a small audience from different walks of life, also targets the connectivity with the communities, by discussing the films after they are screened.

"We run a film festival and a film school and we seem not to have regularly connected with the community out there, yet we want to make sure we go beyond our walls. We want to invite business people, bankers, artists, and film makers so we can make a collaborative network,” Kabera added.

Some of the films screened include ‘Selma’ a British-American historical film based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches led by James Bevel, Hosea Williams, Martin Luther King Jr, and John Lewis, ‘Sam Cooke Crossing over’ documentary, and Oscar award winning film ‘Moonlight’.

Kenyan award winning film ‘First Grader’ will be screened next week.

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