Rwanda: Beyond the Deadly Pit

Is it possible for someone who has lost his family through genocide to ever forget his trauma? Probably not. Can he at least forgive the perpetrators, then? The Rwandan filmmaker Gilbert Ndahayo does his best. He lost his parents in 1994, when the Hutus slaughtered them and around 200 fellow villagers. Ndahayo survived the massacre. Partially in cinema verité style, he films the location of the mass grave in the village, which is to be exhumed in order to allow the survivors to at last perform a dignified funeral. The agony of the past rises up once more, but this is also the moment to start getting over the collective trauma. Surviving relatives question the perpetrators at public hearings. An emotional Ndahayo, himself being filmed on this occasion, asks his father's murderer, once a good acquaintance of the family, how he went about it and how his father died. Each segment of the film presents another facet of this traumatic history and the attempts to deal with its legacy. Ndahayo does this by picking up the camera, while others demonstrate furiously, doubt the existence of a God, or debate the meaning of forgiveness. Gilbert Ndahayo is the first Rwandan genocide survivor to make a personal film on the subject.