'Rwanda': Saying the Hard Words
By Michael O'Sullivan
From The Washington Post, April 2, 2004
"Use your words," my wife and I are always telling our 4-year-old, who's still learning that verbal expression can be more powerful than tears, screaming or fists. That lesson is the subtext of In Rwanda We Say . . . The Family That Does Not Speak Dies, an astonishing little documentary by Anne Aghion, who went to Rwanda to film people expressing their feelings on both sides of the recent genocide, in which ethnic Hutus killed hundreds of thousands of the minority Tutsis.
As part of a program called gacaca, thousands of repentant Hutu murderers have been released back into their communities, leaving them to confront -- in words -- and be confronted by the friends and relatives of their victims. It's a talky film, to be sure, but the remarkable insights that fall from the mouths of the children, spouses and neighbors of the dead are worth hearing, as is the speakers' almost unbelievable ability to forgive.
Yes, there is rage, grief and despair, along with a host of other emotions, but it is the level of articulateness that impresses most as Aghion's camera captures confessed killer Abraham Rwamfizi sitting in the same room with the people whose lives he destroyed. There are no tears, no screaming, no fists, only words. Those words express fear. ("Who's going to stop them from killing again?" one Tutsi woman asks.) They express resignation and anger. But mostly, they express, loudly and clearly, the notion that talking about one's pain is the first step toward healing it.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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