Celestin Uwinkije Gakwaya is an actor both on and off stage. The 38-year-old was born in Burundi and is the 5th child in a family of six.  His father - Gakwaya Jean Baptiste died when Célestin was only three years.

An electrician by profession, the divorced father of two girls - aged nine and ten - is famous for playing an evil character in movies like Serwakira and Rwasibo.

To Gakwaya, movies have been his obsession since childhood and over 90 percent of his punishments at home came from dodging other responsibilities to watch films.

Joining movies

Looking back, Gakwaya remembers the day he arranged an effigy using clothes and covered it on his bed to look like he was the one, before escaping to go and watch an Indian movie.

"Actors like Amitabh Bachchan, Mithun Chakraborty aka Jimmy (of the famous Disco Dancer movie), Govinda and other Indian stars were my idols as a child. That day, I was given enough lashes till my sister advised our mother to allow me to pursue my passion for film,” he says

He enrolled at an acting school and but this ambition was shelved when he decided to join the army. He however quit the army in 1998 and straight away went back to acting with a group called New Generation that operated in Butare and Kigali.

Around 1999-2000, New Generation shot a movie called Iyomenya in which he acted as a Casanova.

"For the first time I became a director. It’s a film I did without a script because I was summoned from Kampala and the rest of the crew was already in Butare. I reached Kigali in a rush and was just given an idea,” he says

Gakwaya then took on TV presentation studies online for two years and then went back to Burundi in 2002 where he started a career in journalism.

"I worked on Heritage TV and also hosted a talk show programme on Bonesha FM every Sunday. The audience kept saying I had a good voice for documentaries and the like. Then one day Chris Nzeyimana, the best documentary film maker at the time approached me after watching me on television. He told me he wanted to help me achieve my dream and that was my first step into proper professional film acting.

Acting and training

In 2009, he went to China for two years and six months to study television presentation and filming; writing, acting, and directing, and returned to Rwanda in December 2012. He has so far received the Best Movie Award, Ubugaragwa. It also won him the best actor award 2012/2013 in Burundi.

Under his Gorilla Company, Gakwaya has embarked on training actors.

"There are action films being shot but you find the action therein is really lacking. For example, you find someone using a gun in a very laughable, amateurish manner. The acting talent is abundant but there are special skills required, depending on the roles. I have so far trained over 70 actors,” he says

He says that acting requires one to be like a chameleon.

"I can transform into many characters and that’s what an actor should be. Like in my current movie, I’m acting as a pastor. For instance in the series Sakabaka, I’m more lethal and most hated than even in Serwakira. People have nicknamed me T-Bag because of my role in Serwakira, someone even commented on social media that it’s like Hitler’s ghost has resurrected, but that’s what acting is all about, "he says.

Growth of Industry

The avenues are many and according to Gakwaya, international companies are open to ideas.

He says that last year, Nigerian actor Ramsey Noah came to Rwanda where together, they shot a film titled ‘Love Brewed in a Rwandan Pot.’

The government has realized that films are a way of reaching masses and has also come aboard.

Every Monday, at least three new films hit the market. A new federation (Rwanda Film Federation), where actors and directors meet and discuss their challenges and a way forward is now open and an optimistic Gakwaya says that the future is bright.