Berlinale 2022: with "Father's Day", Kivu Ruhorahoza questions fatherhood absent in Rwanda

Rwandan director Kivu Ruhorahoza after the presentation of his film "Father's Day" at the Berlinale 2022. © Siegfried Forster / RFI

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

8 mins

"Father's Day" is not about Father's Day, but about the place of paternity and the role of fathers in a Rwanda still scarred by the genocide.

“ 

 ,” says Kivu Ruhorahoza, born in 1982 in Kigali.

Interview with the Rwandan director after the world premiere of the only African film in competition in the “Encounters” section of the Berlinale 2022.

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RFI: How did the idea of ​​making a film about fathers in Rwanda come about

Kivu Ruhorahoza

In Rwanda, there is a lot of discussion on issues of masculinity, fatherhood, the role of fathers in society.

Since 1994, since the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsis, we found ourselves with a real human crisis.

We had a million dead, mostly killed by men.

These men fled the country or went to prison.

Suddenly, we found ourselves with a void, a void concerning fatherhood.

And what was vacant had to be taken by women.

Today, 27 years after the genocide, we find ourselves with consequences that are not always obvious, but which come directly from this national tragedy.

On the radio, on social networks, widely used in Rwanda, we often hear heated debates on the question: who is the father?

What is the role of the father?

Who can or wants to play the role of the father?

From these disparate elements, I wrote a screenplay on the figure of the father, using essentially three characters: one who did not want to be a father.

Another who is an incompetent father.

Yet another being a father with a mysterious past.

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Yves Kiyana in “Father's Day”, directed by Kivu Ruhorahoza (Rwanda) and presented at the Berlinale 2022. © Iyugi Productions

What does it mean for you today to shoot a film in Rwanda on this past which remains present

This is not a film about the past.

On the contrary, it is a film about the present, about the daily life of Rwandans today.

But this traumatic past always remains in the background, it is always a background.

It's like background music that is not disturbing today, but reminds us of our difficulties and traumas that have their origins in the not very distant past.

I didn't want to be didactic with our past, which often invites itself into our current actions and relationships, but it's much more a film about the present and today's young people in Rwanda.

► To read also: Berlinale: who will win the 2022 Golden Bear?

It's a film shot during the Covid epidemic, but it's not a film about the time of the coronavirus.

One of the protagonists of the film reminds us that Rwanda has to face another virus which plagues society.

I wanted to make a film about fatherhood, especially absent fatherhood.

In the film, Zaninka's character talks about this "virus" that eats away at families.

In his case, it is a man who refused to be a father.

Today, patriarchy imposes on men or puts pressure on men to only accept fatherhood when it is biological.

Whereas, with all these orphans and all these vulnerable characters, if there is a society where there were abundant opportunities to play the role of father, it was Rwanda.

This is one of the collective challenges of Rwanda, since patriarchy was at the root of many tragedies in the region.

Sometimes the same men feel incomplete if they haven't had “their” biological son.

But when I talk about fatherhood, I necessarily also mean motherhood.

In Rwanda, a woman is always expected to have a child.

Everywhere she goes, people ask her: how are the children?

For Zaninka, who lost her child, it is a permanent pressure, while she is in crisis with a husband who refused to be a father.

Mediator Kayitesi in “Father's Day”, directed by Kivu Ruhorahoza (Rwanda) and presented at the Berlinale 2022. © Iyugi Productions

This father works very hard and today the son in question died in an accident.

Another father struggles in the street, forced to steal to survive.

He is obsessed with toughening up his son to prepare him for a very difficult life.

The third father is very ill and is waiting for a transplant, but his daughter refuses to donate part of her lung to this father who has always ignored his role during the genocide.

He's a middle-aged father.

It was necessarily there during the many episodes that led us to the great tragedy of 1994. It is a past with which we must come to terms.

You have to know how to move on.

She should perhaps not kill – symbolically – the father, but let him die and live his life.

In Rwanda, we live in a society where there are many people who went through prison with twenty-year sentences.

Afterwards, you have to build society, also with people with a more than troubled past.

Others have never been in prison, for lack of sufficiently established evidence.

This kind of father is very present in our society.

And then there are young fathers, born between 1992 and 2000, at a chaotic time for Rwanda.

There are men born in the street who have had children after themselves.

And they still or half live on the street.

They are struggling every day.

And the Covid epidemic has made them even more vulnerable.

You have to be tough to get out of this misery.

This father thinks that being a man means being very tough.

The third father refused to be a father, because he was not the biological father of the child.

For some men, it's like castration to have a wife with a child from a previous relationship.

Instead of accepting to live in a society that should have done even more formal adoptions – even though there were already a lot.

Mediator Kayitesi and Aline Amike in “Father's Day”, directed by Kivu Ruhorahoza (Rwanda) and presented at the Berlinale 2022. © Iyugi Productions

Father's Day

is also the portrait of two women in search of independence.

Does the new paternity you are looking for pass through women

Women are omnipresent in Rwandan society.

They have a real role in society.

In my previous films, I was not happy with the roles I had written for women.

Today, the two roles of women in the film are from two different generations, but these women found themselves to navigate together in their sorrows and their disarray.

It's a story of friendship between a big sister and a little sister who weren't supposed to meet.

I wanted to make a sincere portrait, without big speeches on women in Rwandan society.

I wanted to do something authentic and fairly ordinary.

You shot

in Kinyarwanda, the local language, and in a very realistic, even naturalistic way, with shots of landscapes, forests, rivers, etc.

Is it a film that you made first to be seen by Rwandans in Rwanda

Absoutely.

It is a film that we absolutely want to show in Rwanda.

I chose Rwandan actors who often work in TV series or on YouTube.

I wanted to see these local stars on the big screen.

It's a film, a story for Rwandans.

The dialogues were not written in English to be translated into Kinyarwanda, as we unfortunately often do.

Most African filmmakers do this, to seek foreign funds for co-production.

I wanted to have the most authentic film possible.

And that means getting as far away as possible from sources of alienation.

So how do we write?

For whom do we write?

I wanted to make a film 100% made in Rwanda.

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