‘Kinyarwanda’ takes Rwanda to Hollywood

Ishmael Ntihabose is the Managing Director of CINE- Education Rwanda and also the Executive Director of Rwanda‘s feature film Kinyarwanda. He wrote the script of the story. Kinyarwanda won the World Cinema Audience Award during the 2011 Sundance Film Festival Awards that were held on January 29, 2011 at Park City, Utah. “I didn’t believe it when the movie won the award. I was in Transit at Kenyatta Airport and felt like I would immediately board the plane back to the US,” Ntihabose recalls. With his inspirational saying, “Never give when you are awake,” the 30-year –old Ntihabose is living his childhood dream. “As a child I always wanted my touch to be felt in everything I did. My metallic locally-made cars were always the best compared to other children. I think that was why I opted for engineering,” Ntihabose explains. Besides producing movies, he attained a Bachelors Degree in Civil Engineering at Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST). “I got involved in film, when I was recruited during the shooting of ‘Sometimes in April’ as the assistant of logistics. I acquired other roles in ‘Shooting Dogs’ and many other Rwandan films. I always asked the director of these movies why they always neglected the role of religion during the 1994 Genocide,” he expresses. He further explains that most survivors lost faith in some religions after the genocide. “Raoul Peck the Director of Sometimes in April once told me that I’m too young to understand. So I requested him to teach me how it is done. During the shooting of Sometimes in April, I started writing everything they said, how they acted hence wrote my own script,” Ntihabose explains. In his script writing, he always remembered the images he saw during the shooting of other movies. “I believed that I could make a film after putting together my baby script. I immediately started applying for funds, when I calculated the budget, it was adding up to half a million US dollars. With just Rwf25,000 in my account, I thought of making a two minutes documentary,” he discloses. He promised not to give up on his dream so he started looking for funds from various Embassies. “Luckily, I got a job with a Japanese construction company (JICA) where I was paid US$50 daily. I managed to save US$30,000 after two years. I used the money to pay for interviews, pay for the cameras, shooting of different scenes and other things,” he narrates. He was able to make 8000 footages which had to be cut to make 90 pages and he looked for help elsewhere. “My friend Josh connected me to Alrick Brown who at the time was lecturing at the National University of Rwanda. He told me to start indentifying actors, actress and locations for the movie. He re-arranged the pages,” he explains. With all the re-arranging and finding the focus for the movie, Ntihabose went back to the task of looking for funders of the movie. “The European Commission offered to give me 80% of the money that I needed which was still 500,000USD.But on condition that I had to find an umbrella (organization). The Moslem Association of Rwanda (AMUR) allowed being the organization. We used their premises and documents. I got in kind donation from Ministries to compensate the 20%,” Ntihabose says. The Kinyarwanda film portrays how under the directive of the Mufti, Hutu Muslims protected the Tutsi from the interahamwe during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. “I wanted the movie to be typically Rwandan. I wanted Kinyarwanda to go to Hollywood not Hollywood coming to Rwanda. Getting the movie from the paper to the shooting, took seven years of hard work yet the shooting was just 19 days,” Ntihabose explains. Cleophas Kabasita, an actress in Kinyarwanda acknowledges Ntihabose‘s work during an interview. “He had a vision and he knew the focus of his story. There is nothing as good as working with someone who knows what they want,” she expresses. It was the horrific incidents he saw at the age of thirteen during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi that greatly inspired him into telling his story. “We were attacked at home that dreadful day and the killers put us in one room. They spared father because he was a good football player who had scored many goals against Rayon Sport at the time. The leader of the militia picked me up by the neck and said he would enjoy killing me, so he took me out and dumped me in his trunk,” Ntihabose gravely recalls. He says that he doesn’t remember how long he had spent in the trunk of the car although each time they reached a road block, the Killer would open up the trunk and brag on how he was going to enjoy killing him. “He killed several people and I could hear them screaming. At one moment when I thought he was going to kill me, he first asked if I was hungry. He said he would not kill me on an empty stomach. He gave me biscuits. Although I was scared, I managed to eat them,” he narrates. At some point, the killer a got Ntihabose out of the trunk to kill him but instead left him standing in a place he didn’t know. “We had reached some border, although later, I got to know it was the Cyangugu border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. The killer looked at me and made a compliment about my teeth before he drove off. “While at the border, a Rwandan woman asked me where I was coming from. After listening to my story, she decided to help me cross the border to DRC. Although she was Hutu, she hid me at her home in DRC for days,” he says. Democratic Republic of Congo was not safe because the Interahamwe militias sought refuge running away since the Rwanda Patriotic Force had taken over the country. “She told me that DRC was no longer a safe place for me, she arranged for my passage to Burundi. The following day she ordered the bus conductor and another woman to make sure I reached Burundi safely. She gave me money worth 1000 DRC francs,” he narrates. Crossing the Burundian border was easy because of the insurgency in Rwanda at the time. Ntihabose spent his first night on the streets of Bujumbura. “At a place called Pagidas, street children beat me up and took the 100Burundian francs that I had attained after the exchange. Luck was always on my side because the following day, the street children took me to a restaurant where they usually ate. The owners liked me and took me in,” he expresses. Ntihabose continued to get favors and was able to go to school during his stay in Burundi. He attained soccer skills like his father, and this was advantageous. “Although I had relatives in Burundi I didn’t know how to contact them at the time I was there. I only knew the name of the area they stayed (Nyakabiga). I could remember the name because it sounded funny. One day, a relative spotted me while playing soccer in the stadium and he couldn’t believe that I was 17 years old, at the time,” he recalls. He re-united with his family and they held funeral rites for everyone they lost during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. “After some years we decided to return to Rwanda to see if anyone had survived. We were surprised to find my mother and father. They had looked everywhere for me and they had lost hope of ever seeing me again,” says Ntihabose. Although he lost most of his family and friends during the Genocide, the joy of seeing his parents is his most memorable moment in life. His Favorites Dish: - Sea food Music: - Country music Sport: - Soccer Quote: - ‘We are the first of the generation charged by post-reconstruction Rwanda. We are responsible to give direction to Rwanda and to its future people.’ Dorau20@yahoo.co.uk