Collegiate Times

“Icyzizere” (pronounced e-cheez-eh-reh). What looks like alphabet soup, is actually a word in Kinywaranda, which is the spoken language of Rwanda. It means hope, but it is also the title of a documentary by Patrick Mureithi.

Mureithi, a Kenyan filmmaker, tells the story of 10 survivors and 10 perpetrators of the 1994 Rwanda genocide who, together, find the path to forgiveness through taking part in a three-day workshop as they learn about posttraumatic stress disorder. They go through a series of group exercises to built trust and realize how much more similar they are then different.

“ICYIZERE:hope” has been shown at the 2009 Rwanda Film Festival, Rwanda National Television and numerous colleges throughout the United States.
Mureithi spoke with the Collegiate Times over the phone to discuss the Rwandan genocide and his film.

COLLEGIATE TIMES: How did you choose the title of this film?
MUREITHI: I thought hope would be an appropriate title because of the circumstances the people of Rwanda went through and the power of the workshops.

CT: How did you get your start as a filmmaker? What has influenced you in this process?

MUREITHI: I studied mass media when I was a student at Missouri State University, and one summer I took an intersession called “The History and Theory of Documentaries,” and got the chance to watch one to two documentaries and fell in love with the process of telling stories through film. So I knew that this was something I would like to do after I graduated. I worked as a cameraman at a local television station, and a few years after, I left to do freelance video production and make video documentaries.

CT: What led you to make a film about the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda?

MUREITHI: When the genocide started in 1994, I was in Kenya and I was 17 years old. I was born and raised there. I didn’t recall hearing anything about the genocide or reading about it probably because I was 17 and my concerns were elsewhere. It wasn’t until 2004 when I watched a documentary called “Ghosts of Rwanda,” which was released on PBS, where I truly understood how severe the situation was in Rwanda.

I felt a sense of despair because of how it happened so close to where I used to live. I learned about the workshops a year later and felt this story must be told. This account focuses on the theme of forgiveness and reconciliation and more than being about the Rwanda story, it is about the human story. Making this film would make the people of Rwanda more aware of these workshops and hopefully accelerate the process of healing.

I just wanted to tell a story that was so powerful; how 10 million people, how many lost loved ones or watched them get killed, how many were affected and how many would benefit from the message of reconciliation through this film. I feel media is a very powerful tool and can be used to unite and heal the people of Rwanda.

CT: How did you find out about this reconciliation workshop?

MUREITHI: I live in Missouri, and one weekend I went to St. Louis with my wife and children to visit my wife’s relatives. We went to a Quaker service where there was an aspect of worship where we sit in silence for one hour and if someone feels compelled then they speak.

After they were done speaking, then they would come down and it would be back to silence. One fellow talked about his experience in Rwanda and how he met a genocide survivor who told him she was in same room as her mother when her mother was killed. The lady told him that the man who hacked her mom had turned to her and told her to run. When he mentioned that, immediately I began to think and wonder why that fellow would tell her to run.

I came back home and did research about the genocide and learned the history, propaganda and the way colonialism played a role in their society. I saw this situation as more complex than I thought and felt the need to make a film about that.

CT: Did you help design any part of the workshop?

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A version of this article appeared in the Mar 23 issue of the Collegiate Times.