“My Neighbor My Killer” Post-Film discussion with filmmaker Anne Aghion, survivor and activist Liliane Pari Umhoza in conversation with Dr. Alexis Herr

“My Neighbor My Killer” Film and Post Screening Discussion with the documentary filmmaker Anne Aghion, survivor and activist Liliane Pari Umuhoza in conversation with Dr. Alexis Herr

Sunday, December 12, 2021
3:00-4:30pm
Zoom | Registration ends 30 minutes before the start of the program

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Classrooms Without Borders and the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage are excited to offer the opportunity to watch the film “My Neighbor My Killer” and engage in a post-film discussion with the documentary filmmaker Anne Aghion, Liliane Pari Umuhoza in conversation with Dr. Alexis Herr.

This special film series co-sponsored by

MY NEIGHBOR MY KILLER
Could you ever forgive the people who slaughtered your family? In 1994, hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutus were incited to wipe out the country’s Tutsi minority. From the crowded capital to the smallest village, local ‘patrols’ massacred lifelong friends and family members, most often with machetes and improvised weapons. Announced in 2001, and ending this year, the government put in place the Gacaca Tribunals — open-air hearings with citizen-judges meant to try their neighbors and rebuild the nation. As part of this experiment in reconciliation, confessed genocide killers are sent home from prison, while traumatized survivors are asked to forgive them and resume living side-by-side. Filming for close to a decade in a tiny hamlet, award-winning filmmaker Anne Aghion has charted the impact of Gacaca on survivors and perpetrators alike. Through their fear and anger, accusations and defenses, blurry truths, inconsolable sadness, and hope for life renewed, she captures the emotional journey to coexistence.

Anne Aghion- Producer and Director

Multiple award-winning filmmaker Anne Aghion has been praised by critics both as a director of unique and poetic vision, and a documentarian who conveys a strong sense of the people and places she covers. Her work has earned her, among other honors, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Emmy, the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival’s Nestor Almendros Award for Courage in Filmmaking, an Arts & Literary Arts Residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, a MacDowell Colony Elodie Osborn Fellowship, and a UNESCO Fellini Prize. Her most recent documentary, My Neighbor My Killer, capped nearly ten years of filming the Gacaca (pr. ga-TCHA-tcha) justice process in post- genocide Rwanda. There, Aghion charted the emotional impact of a system of local open-air courts that adjudicated genocide crimes, and returned killers to their homes in exchange for confessions.

My Neighbor My Killer is one of the rare documentaries to be accepted in Official Selection at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Since then, it has been invited to screen across the globe. It is the feature-length companion to a trilogy of hour-long films. Gacaca, Living Together Again in Rwanda? (2003), and Emmy-winner In Rwanda we say… The family that does not speak dies (2005), have aired on television internationally. The final chapter, The Notebooks of Memory, was completed in 2009.

Beyond their success as documentaries, the Gacaca Films are recognized as a vital tool for understanding Rwanda’s bold experiment in social reconstruction. They have also had impact on the ground in Rwanda, where they have been used by NGOs for community-based training, and most remarkably, were screened for tens of thousands of confessed genocide killers before their release from prison.

Philip Gourevitch, author of “We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, Stories from Rwanda,” has said of Aghion’s work that it “captures quite precisely much of what is most compelling and unsettling about Rwanda’s quest for justice after genocide.”

Moving in an altogether different direction, in 2008, Aghion released Ice People, a documentary feature that explores the physical, emotional and spiritual adventure of living and conducting science in Antarctica. Filmed “on the ice” over the course of four months, it was described by Variety as “staggeringly beautiful,” and received critical praise from publications as diverse as the The New York Times, USA Today, ArtForum and EARTH Magazine.

Currently in early stages of development are film projects that will take Aghion to the Indian subcontinent, and a multi-media art installation that will draw on her experiences in Antarctica and New Zealand.

Aghion splits her time between New York and Paris. She holds a degree in Arab Language and Literature from Barnard College at Columbia University in New York. Before making films, she spent close to a decade at The New York Times, and then at the International Herald Tribune in Paris.

Aghion is co-founder and Honorary President of IRIBA CENTER FOR MULTIMEDIA HERITAGE in Kigali, a place where all Rwandans will have access to the country’s audiovisual history.

To learn more about Anne Aghion and her other films, visit her website www.anneaghionfilms.com.

Liliane Pari Umuhoza- Survivor and Activist
Liliane Umuhoza is a Rwandan human rights advocate and founder of “Women Genocide Survivors Retreat” program, supporting women survivors of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and she currently works for Foundation Rwanda as a project manager. Liliane uses her education in Peace and Conflict studies, work with nonprofit organizations and life experience of surviving the Genocide against the Tutsi to fight against injustice and summon global dialogue and actions against human right abuses. She has spoken at events related to peace-building, human rights and women empowerment at universities, the UN, the Embassy of Rwanda in Washington DC, the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City and many others. Liliane is currently based in Kigali, Rwanda.”

Dr. Alexis Herr- moderator

Dr. Alexis Herr has dedicated her life to combating genocide and atrocity. This passion has motivated her educational and professional pursuits and translates into a strong desire to prevent human rights violations. Ms. Herr received a doctorate in Holocaust History from the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University, and currently lectures at the University of San Francisco and University of California, Berkeley.

She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards including the Saul Kagan Claims Conference Postdoctoral Fellowship (2017-2018), the European Historical Research Infrastructure Fellowship (2017), the Pearl Resnick Postdoctoral Fellowship in Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC (2016), and the Saul Kagan Claims Conference Dissertation Fellowship (2012-2014).

She is the author of The Holocaust and Compensated Compliance in Italy: Fossoli di Carpi, 1942 – 1952 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and the editor of Rwanda: The Essential Reference Guide (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2018) and Sudan: The Essential Reference Guide (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2020).

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