Cinema: "Father's Day" in Rwanda, what role for men, fathers, genocidaires?
02:44
Yves Kiyana in “Father's Day”, directed by Kivu Ruhorahoza (Rwanda).
© Iyugi Productions
Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow
|
Video by: Siegfried Forster Follow
4 mins
A very modest film on the harmful consequences of the genocide against the Tutsis in relation to the role of men today.
With "Father's Day", presented this Thursday, June 23 in preview at the Center Pompidou-Paris, the Rwandan director Kivu Ruhorahoza questions the crisis of fatherhood in his country of origin.
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“
Who are we writing for
?
I wanted to make a film 100
% made in Rwanda
”,
proudly explains Kivu Ruhorahoza.
With a budget of 50,000 dollars, supported by Gaël Faye, Dida Nibagwire and Iyugi Prods for the production, the filmmaker managed to move mountains to make the impossible possible, shoot in Kinyarwanda, the local language, a film about the collapse of patriarchal values after the 1994 genocide.
“
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.
»
“
A film about the present
”
After the world premiere in February at the prestigious Berlinale, followed by a reception at the Museum of Modern Arts and the Lincoln Center in New York, as well as the Silver Lady Arimaguada Prize at the LPA Film Festival,
Father's Day
continues its tour of previews today at the Center Pompidou-Paris, accompanied by an online discussion with Kivu Ruhorahoza.
“
It's 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 -
which is not disturbing today
- but which reminds us of our difficulties and our traumas which 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.
»
[Video] "Father's Day", the human crisis in Rwanda, seen by Kivu Ruhorahoza
02:44
"Father's Day", the human crisis in Rwanda, seen by the Rwandan filmmaker Kivu Ruhorahoza.
© Iyugi Productions
The traumas of a society
As in his previous films, Ruhorahoza explores the traumas of a society.
In 2011,
Gray Matter
, his first feature film and one of the very first feature films written and directed by a Rwandan, follows an African filmmaker who struggles to make his first film,
The Cockroach Cycle
, in a country still traumatized by the war.
In 2019, in
Europa, "
Based On A True Story
"
, Ruhorahoza points to social tensions and rising xenophobia in the United Kingdom and Europe.
In
Father's Day
, he recounts with great restraint the deflagration of values on the men's side.
Because the absolute majority of acts of violence and murders during the genocide were committed by men, who were then forced to flee the country or go to prison.
But, instead of tackling the subject head-on, Ruhorahoza has written a screenplay that enigmatically shows three very different types of fathers: the first has never accepted the role of father for his wife's son.
The second, born in the street, turns out to be too violent and incompetent to transmit real values to his son.
And the third father is rejected by his daughter because of his bloody and murderous past.
Kivu Ruhorahoza, Rwandan director of "Father's Day".
© Siegfried Forster / RFI © Siegfried Forster / RFI
Three types of fathers
"
He's a middle-aged father.
It was inevitably there during the many episodes which brought us to the great tragedy of 1994. It is a past with which it is necessary to make with.
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 were never in prison, for lack of sufficiently established evidence.
This kind of father is very present in our society.
»
In this country marked today by a paternity called into question, even absent, it is women who have often taken the place to build a more just and viable society.
It is therefore no surprise that they are the ones who play the central role in this film, which is nonetheless devoted to fathers: “
I wanted to paint a sincere portrait, without making big speeches about women in Rwandan society.
I wanted to do something authentic and quite ordinary.
»
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