HE thought quickly, and then let out a stammered stream of words.Trying to express his thoughts on coping with years of history, violence and loss from the warring and eventual killing during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, graduate student and Rwanda native Filius Uwishema finally came to a conclusion. “There is no interest in people hating each other,” Uwishema said, having just left a screening of- “Icyizere: Hope” held in Anspach Hall Monday night.He did not directly experience the Genocide, but was directly affected by its consequences, having lost many friends and relatives. “My wife is a survivor,” he said. “She’s the only one left out of a family of 11 people.”Shot, edited and released by filmmaker Patrick Mureithi after spending time in the African nation in 2007, he showed the film in many cities across Rwanda and at the Rwandan Film Festival in 2008 and 2009.Focusing on a meeting of 10 survivors of the 1994 Genocide and 10 perpetrators of it, the film identifies the struggles of both groups to come to peace with what occurred. “I felt like I lost my faith in humanity; the goodness of man,” Mureithi said to a crowd of about 100.During the making of the film, Mureithi said he went through depression after hearing so many stories of personal and communal devastation. “My grief is what propelled me to make such a film,” he said.One story in the film focuses on a woman named Solange, who organised the support group filmed by Mureithi.At the age of 14, when the Genocide occurred, she lost her cousins and her parents. “I never said farewell to them,” she said in the film. “I never thought I would escape.”The film also focuses on a perpetrator of the killings, a man named John.He, over time, begins to reconcile within himself and, with the help of the group, with what happened then and how it affects him now. Agencies
