Just six days after Rwanda Cinema Centre concluding the annual film festival an award-winning documentary on reconciliation will be screened today and Friday before hitting the countryside. The 2008 Student Academy Award Gold Medal winner for Best Documentary, “As we Forgive”, will premiere in Rwanda on July 1, at Serena Hotel, the screening will be by invitation. On July 3, the screening will be open to public at Petit Stade, Remera at 5:00pm. The documentary features two Rwandan women, Chantal and Rosaria, who face the perpetrators who killed their families during the 1994 Rwanda Genocide against Tutsi. The July 3, screening which will be hosted by the Minister of Culture and Sports, Joseph Habineza, will be free and people are encouraged to bring family and friends. Local artistes will perform before the documentary starts and several Rwandans will speak about these reconciliations efforts. “As We Forgive”, a documentary directed and produced by Laura Water Hinson of Image Bearer Pictures, has received widespread acclaim from film critics, audiences in North America, and stakeholders in the government and private sector in Rwanda, among many others. The overwhelmingly positive response encouraged Laura to explore the possibility of using the film as a tool to inspire reconciliation in Rwanda. The “As We Forgive” Initiative steering committee, made up of government representatives, NGOs and Churches, hopes that the film will encourage dialogue within the country that repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation are possible and benefit the survivours and perpetrators, as well as the nation as a whole. “My hope is that this movie will encourage Rwandans, and all people struggling from devastating conflicts like the Genocide against the Tutsi, to have hope, that reconciliation can heal them personally and communally,” Laura said. Laura believes that this Rwandan-led initiative will help people across the nation to watch the film and have access to discussion materials and guides to assist in reconciliation. Andrea McDaniel, the Manager of “As We Forgive” Rwanda Initiative, said that Rwandans have made huge strides toward this goal following the Genocide against the Tutsi, and it is the Initiative’s hope that the nationwide tour will further promote reconciliation in the country. “Reconciliation through repentance and forgiveness is something Rwandans have already begun to achieve, and against all odds,” McDaniel said. Following the national premiere on Friday July 3, the movie and reconciliation initiative will be shown in schools, Churches, prisons and villages in all 30 districts of the country. Ends
