In the Shade of the Hills

A l'ombre des collines

An organisation founded by a survivor of the Rwandan genocide employs creativity and art to help children and vulnerable parents, and to prevent history repeating itself.

Amani is 31. When he was an infant, he survived the genocide against Rwanda’s Tutsi population. Three decades later, Amani has set up an organisation in Nyamirambo, one of the more economically impoverished districts of the country’s capital, Kigali. It employs creativity, artistic practice and performance to grapple with poverty and generational trauma – acknowledging that deep-seated ideologies can easily foment prejudice and create an environment that proved so catastrophic in the past. While acknowledging the historical context, Anne Jochum and Laetitia Gaudin Le Puil’s film is mainly focused on Amani’s work, the lives and experiences of the people he offers help to, and how his worldview aims at ensuring the history he lived through is never repeated.