LEND ME YOUR VOICE, a short documentary by Rwandan female filmmaker Claudine Ndimbira Shenge has been selected to show at the forthcoming 2022 Sheffield Doc/Fest slated from June 23-28 in Sheffield, United Kingdom.
Sheffield DocFest, which returns for its 29th edition, is now widely recognised as one of the top three documentary festivals in the world, and "the most significant documentary festival in Britain"
The Festival has been voted one of the Top Five Coolest Documentary Film Festivals in the World by MovieMaker magazine.
Rwandan filmmaker Shenge poses for a photo . Courtesy photos
‘Lend Me our Voice’ is a story centered on a young former Congolese but now a Burundian refugee, told through strangers who help her carry that burden by reading her true story as if it was their own.
Produced in both English and French, the documentary lasts 20 minutes and was produced in partnership with South African company earlier this year.
Shenge described having her documentary selected to show at such a top doc festival of DocFest’s caliber as one of the biggest achievements of her filmmaking career so far.
"It's a big step in my career. It is a validation that the effort and time that I put in my work are recognised. Those are big festivals and when I am making a film that's what I am hoping for,” she told The New Times.
"When it happens for me that's a success, I always like to see the audience appreciating my films especially when the message I wanted to give reaches the audience. That's the only way that I knew how to communicate,” she added.
Lend Me Your Voice is one of the 25 Generation Africa documentary films made by African filmmakers looking at the living realities of African Youth through the lens of human migration across 16 anglophone and francophone countries of the continent.
The 25 films are currently being broadcast on ARTE TV.
Who is Shenge?
Shenge is a Rwandan filmmaker who resides in Kigali, born on April 4, 1990.
After her secondary studies, Shenge followed a three-month short course in digital filmmaking at Kwetu Film Institute.
Since then she has been to several different workshops and masterclasses in different filmmaking departments and has also been part of the International class at Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany, between the year 2017 and 2018.
Shenge made her first short film as a director in 2013, since then she has done a few other films as a scriptwriter, director, and producer. Shenge's films made it into different festivals, some of them are the Pan African Film Festival – Los Angeles, the AFRIKAMERA Film Festival – Berlin, the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, and Afrika Filmfestival – Leuven.
Synopsis
Akili, a young refugee in Rwanda who has endured a long and painful journey, sits with strangers and invites them to read her story.
Akili has lived a difficult life, leaving the Congo for Burundi as a refugee, and then having to flee to Rwanda. Her family was displaced and separated, she has held in prison, tortured, and threatened with death. Through all this, her strength and resilience kept her going. She found a place for herself in the world of boxing, but misogyny also took that dream from her. In an experiment with human empathy Akili sits with strangers and reads them her story. Through this act she tries to deal with the many losses she has lived through.