"Our Lady of the Nile", Atiq Rahimi tells the roots of the genocide in Rwanda

Amanda Mugabekazi in "Our Lady of the Nile", film directed by Atiq Rahimi, based on the novel by Scholastique Mukasonga. © Bac Films

Text by: Sophie Torlotin

The genocide of Tutsis who bloodied Rwanda in 1994 is not a spontaneous tragedy. The roots go back to the past. "Notre-Dame du Nil", the adaptation of the novel by Scholastique Mukasonga by the writer-filmmaker Atiq Rahmi, comes out this Wednesday, February 5 in France and returns to a less known episode: a purification in 1973.

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To adapt the novel by his Rwandan friend Scholastique Mukasonga, the novelist went to Rwanda. Atiq Rahimi is not African, but, born in Afghanistan, in 1962, he knows the tears of war: " I lived the first years of war in Afghanistan, I lost my brother and I know what c is the wounds of a war. When I went to Rwanda, in fact, I felt that. "

Notre-Dame du Nil is a chronicle located in 1973, in a Catholic boarding school. Good Rwandan society sends its young daughters there. But there cannot be more than ten percent of Tutsi students. The film, like the novel, shows the discrimination at work. And an ethnic cleansing that affected intellectuals that year, more than twenty years before the genocide.

Atiq Rahimi shot in Rwanda with young beginner actresses: I didn't want to have Tutsi girls on one side and Hutu girls on the other. I only want Rwandan women. "

The writer films the abomination on the move. This filming in Rwanda has also inspired the writer and filmmaker to write a book, The Guest of the Mirror , in which we can read: “ You have to name the horror, otherwise it will come back. "

► Also read: The screening of the film “Notre-Dame du Nil” in Rwanda

► Also to listen to: the show You tell me the news with the director Atiq Rahimi and the actor Pascal Greggory (actor).

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  • Cinema
  • Rwanda
  • Culture
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