DMovies - Your platform for thought-provoking cinema

Rwanda & Juliet

Director - Ben Proudfoot - 2016

"Filthy genius movie"
'Til death do us part: the tragic love of Romeo and Juliet is a metaphor for the Rwandan genocide, and it also offers hope for the orphans of the tragedy - in new documentary right now at the Sheffield Doc Fest

What happens when eccentric 75-year-old Ivy-League professor Andrew Garrod travels to Kigali, Rwanda, in order to bring together orphans of the 1994 genocide by casting them in a stage production of “Romeo and Juliet”? The first feature documentary Rwanda & Juliet, by the Canadian Ben Proudfoot, has the answer.

The first part of the film is centered on the white professor, who wants to make a difference in the lives of the struggling people of Rwanda. His intention is to bring Shakespeare into countries that suffered genocide (right now he in Bosnia). He joins forces with the community leaders before he approaches the young people. They wisely decide to set the play in three languages: 60% in Kinyarwanda, 20% in French and 20% in English.

The auditions revealed that boys and girls are technically unprepared but they realise that the play “will be something huge and forbidden”. Rwandans still find it very difficult to talk about one of the most fulminant genocides in History – in just 100 days in 1994, some 800,000 Tutsi people were slaughtered by ethnic Hutu extremists. For these people, it might be easy conveying feeling of hate on stage, but there is a lot of work to do in order to achieve some professionalism. The company director Andrew Garrod is an idealistic man. In the middle of the project, a sponsor drops out, which makes it impossible for them to pay the actors.

Garrod behaves like most of the company directors: he is a little bit tyrannical. Only three days before the first presentation the Black cast decides to go on strike, claiming that there will be nothing left after the white people go back to the US and Canada. There is plenty of fear in the air.

Proudfoot doesn’t capture the moment when the cast reverts their decision to stop. The film then becomes more engaging because the focus turns to the kids. They are filmed giving their testimonies in the rural areas of Kigali, where they were raised and saw their relatives killed. There are ethical and moral issues at staging Shakespeare at such pace, and reconciling with past.

In the end, experience turns out to be very positive. It seems that the young actors had a chance to make peace with themselves. The young Juliet — the beautiful, passionate and headstrong Tete — chooses to become a professional actress. Rwanda & Juliet is a compassionate film about the power of art. Prodfoot leaves to the very end the revelation of a moving metaphor of people from Rwanda.

The film is showing at Sheffield Doc/Fest, which DMovies is following live right now.

You can also watch the film trailer below:

.



"Filthy genius movie"

By Maysa Monção - 12-06-2016

By Maysa Monção - 12-06-2016

Maysa Monção is a Brazilian writer, teacher, translator, editor and art performer who currently lives in London. She has a Masters Degree in Film Studies from Tor Vergata University in Rome, Italy, ...

DMovies Poll

Are the Oscars dirty enough for DMovies?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Most Read

Forget Friday the 13th, Paranormal Activity and the [Read More...]
Just a few years back, finding a film [Read More...]
A lot of British people would rather forget [Read More...]
Another year has gone by, and DMovies is [Read More...]
A small family of four lives in a [Read More...]
Pigs might fly. And so Brexit might happen. [Read More...]

Read More

Is 65 the new Jurassic Park?

 

Marina Hillquist - 28-03-2023

Marina Hillquist argues that the American sci-fi action thriller by the creators of A Quiet Place had the potential to unseat the monopoly of the Jurassic Park franchise, but it struggled to escape some familiar trappings [Read More...]

Riotsville USA

Sierra Pettengill
2023

Eoghan Lyng - 28-03-2023

American documentary conducts a probing investigation into one of the USA's most shameful moments in history, the Vietnam War, offering few answers but many damning insights - in cinemas on Friday, March 31st [Read More...]

Reclaiming Vincente Minnelli’s overlooked gem

 

Isy Santini - 25-03-2023

Not quite what it seems: Isy Santini takes a dirty look at Vincente Minnelli's Brigadoon and argues that the film - which most thought to be a musical - was in reality a horror piece! [Read More...]

Facebook Comment

Website Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *