MARTIN MUSABYIMANA, a 34-year-old film maker is working on a series of movies that aim at instilling cultural values, such as solidarity among Rwandans, as its main message. Dubbed “Umutabazi”, the film aims at helping curb crimes related to human and drug trafficking. Moreover, one of the main messages of the movie is that truth always wins. The movie is about two competing characters who act as drugs and human traffickers, struggling to do “business”, regardless of their human rights violation. Among the girls being trafficked, a sister of the main character called “Mutabazi” is also a victim. Mutabazi does all he can to save his sister, and makes sure the two rings are brought down. How the movie came about After encountering financial constraints that did not allow him to move on with his studies, Martin Musabyimana, the film director noticed he had a talent to act. So he attended a film school and studied film production for almost three years, upon which he graduated and commenced his initiative to develop the action movie industry in Rwanda. He gathered 15 Taekwondo students and called their team, DAMU. He then started training them on acting and movie production. In 2019, he embarked on releasing his first episode and now they have shot more than ten episodes. Musabyimana who is the brain behind the initiative however says that there is still a gap to develop the movie industry in Rwanda. “We did this to develop the action movie industry which is still low in Rwanda, we have martial arts students and Taekwondo professionals, so why don’t we make use of them?” he wonders. “Though the whole movie market in Rwanda is still so low, most of the movie makers opt to use YouTube as their mode of income generation, so there is still a big gap,” he added. The members of DAMU group whose activities are coordinated by Musabyimana share a common goal of promoting their movie series to the international market.
