Amnesty International Film Festival: FC Rwanda not exactly a hopeful post-genocide documentary

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      Although Dutch director Joris Postema’s FC Rwanda won’t be viewed as a definitive documentary take on the state of national reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda, it does raise some disturbing questions.

      The official line—that Rwandans are just that, Rwandan citizens, and not Hutus or Tutsis or any other subgroup—comes in for some subversive discourse, voiced or implied, in this 57-minute look at some members of the country’s top soccer team, APR FC, on the eve of an annual showdown with its national rival, Rayon Sports.

      The APR (Armée Patriotique Rwandaise) team represents, essentially, the government, the armed forces, the official enforcers of reconciliation in the aftermath of one of the most horrific bloodbaths in modern history: the 1994 Rwandan genocide that resulted in the deaths of up to a million Tutsis (Rwanda’s ethnic minority) and moderate Hutus (the country’s ethnic majority).

      Soccer game a bloodless bloodbath

      Rayon represents, as Daniel Sabiiti, a local journalist, says, “civil society”, mostly Hutus, and is the most popular team in the nation, supported by as much as 70 percent of Rwanda’s 11 million population.

      Through interviews with three of APR’s players, we hear both echoes of official policy—"Ethnic problems no longer exist between Hutus and Tutsis, none whatsoever,” its star player asserts—and acknowledgements that ethnic origins are discussed by the ostensibly mixed members of the organization.

      But if the games between the two teams, the biggest rivals in Rwanda, are to be seen officially as a platform for reconciliation, you wouldn’t know it by watching the highlights of the built-up match. There is no mistaking the battle lines that are drawn and the emotions that are acted out by the fans of Rayon, and it appears that the game is not only a battle by proxy but a safe—meaning officially sanctioned—catharsis for tensions and resentments not allowed to be voiced anymore. As one person says, “it is safer” to obey the government and watch what you say, at least in public

      Chilling "cockroach" radio clip

      Postema eschews graphic shots of the 1994 carnage, limiting himself to some eyewitness accounts—including that of a player who was a young child when he saw his siblings led away to be butchered—and a chilling archived national-radio snippet addressed to the Tutsi “cockroaches” who were then being hunted down and executed. Another one features a live song celebrating the daily exterminations, the tune of which one APR player remembers to this day and offers to sing on-camera.

      The film certainly does not end on an optimistic note. The much-anticipated game is a lopsided victory for Rayon (with a jubilant supporter making gruesome throat-cutting motions for the camera), and the government representatives in the stands get up to leave, silent and with blank faces. The losing dressing room is as quiet as a grave.

      Sabiiti, who maintains that his fellow citizens are too afraid to engage in healing dialogue, says the country’s true test will come in a few years, with President Paul Kagame’s successor.

      “The world should wait until the next president. When Rwandans do not think they are Rwandans [first] five years from now, then we shall say, ‘It wasn’t real reconciliation.’ ”

      World should watch Rwanda

      There are, perhaps, two thoughts that can be taken out of this ducumentary exercise. One of them should be not to dismiss this look at a complex and divisive issue as superficial and lacking in "expert" analysis. Widespread feelings and passions are just those, and they are no less so for being reflected through the lens of soccer, that continent's most popular sport.

      Another should be for the international community to be vigilant to proceedings in Rwanda, especially given its incredibly shameful inaction—with very few exceptions—during those three months in 1994.

      The genocide doesn't seem like it took place only 20 years ago; it seems like more than a century has passed since the bloodletting. And that's just the way some people, and western countries, would like it to remain: shadowy, poorly remembered, and with accusing fingers lowered in the spirit of forced "reconciliation".

      The Amnesty International Film Festival takes place at the Central Library (350 West Georgia Street), lower level, Alice MacKay Room, on Friday and Saturday (October 17 and 18). FC Rwanda screens at 11:40 a.m. Saturday. Admission is free for all films, but seating is limited. For more information, go here

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