{"id":1787,"date":"2026-05-17T12:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T12:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/2026\/05\/17\/cannes-hidden-gem-the-rwandan-genocide-faces-an-intense-reckoning-in-benimana\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T12:30:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T12:30:00","slug":"cannes-hidden-gem-the-rwandan-genocide-faces-an-intense-reckoning-in-benimana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/2026\/05\/17\/cannes-hidden-gem-the-rwandan-genocide-faces-an-intense-reckoning-in-benimana\/","title":{"rendered":"Cannes Hidden Gem: The Rwandan Genocide Faces an Intense Reckoning in \u2018Ben\u2019Imana\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\tMarie Cl\u00e9mentine Dusabejambo<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0Ben\u2019Imana<\/em>\u00a0follows a survivor who leads her community toward reconciliation \u2014 but doesn\u2019t extend that grace to her daughter\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tMarie Cl\u00e9mentine Dusabejambo\u00a0undertook extensive research, over about a decade, for her first feature film,\u00a0Ben\u2019Imana<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 a nuanced look at the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, told from the perspective of women involved in community reconciliation projects and conversations. Dusabejambo listened to harrowing stories from survivors and heard brutal confessions from regretful perpetrators. Initially, she kept crying \u2014 this was her community, too, after all, with real wounds unhealed. Then she realized: \u201cThey\u2019re not crying when they\u2019re telling me this. Why am I crying?\u201d \t<\/p>\n

\tThat kind of hard-earned wisdom is all over\u00a0Ben\u2019Imana<\/em>. In her 20s, Dusabejambo was planning on attending university for electronics and telecommunications before taking a callout for new filmmakers. She fell hard for the language of cinema and quickly knew that she wanted to make her own movie about the legacy of the genocide, which she grew up in. Her first short followed two students, one of whose parents was killed during that period. \u201cAt that time I didn\u2019t have knowledge of the weight of what happened during and after the genocide,\u201d she says. \u201cBut that led to this film.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tThe crux of\u00a0Ben\u2019Imana<\/em>\u00a0explores the relationship between V\u00e9n\u00e9randa (Cl\u00e9mentine U. Nyirinkindi), a survivor who leads community recovery efforts, and her teenage daughter, who\u2019s newly, unexpectedly pregnant. This causes a rift between the two women \u2014 clashes of tradition versus modernity, evolving gender roles, and most centrally for the topic of this movie, forgiveness. We watch V\u00e9n\u00e9randa cruelly scold her daughter in the same breath that she empathically urges women reeling from very dark choices to forgive themselves. \t<\/p>\n

\tThese themes emerged out of conversations Dusabejambo had with these actual women, traumatized and\/or guilty, before casting them in the film despite no acting experience. \u201cThey bring in something that is real,\u201d the filmmaker says. Because of the depth of her knowledge of their stories and psyches, she could guide their scenes accordingly: \u201cI was also trying to find their language: How do they talk about themselves? How do they talk about this history without being too\u202freductive?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tThat reflects the larger achievement of\u00a0Ben\u2019Imana<\/em>: The film carries across a very specific, melancholy, but warm point of view. Dusabejambo knows that having a Rwandan film centered almost entirely on women felt novel on its own, but she was never satisfied with that as a differentiator. \u201cThe place women have in Rwanda is one of influence and power that is indirect, but it\u2019s a matriarchal society \u2014 and there are women who participated in the killings,\u201d she says. \u201cIn this mothering space where we all met, I wanted to go through the women\u2019s hearts and find the\u202fheartbeat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThat collective spirit extended behind the camera, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tSays Dusabejambo: \u201cIt\u2019s a small community. We have been working together for a long time in the film industry in Rwanda. We coexist in collectivity.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marie Cl\u00e9mentine Dusabejambo\u2019s\u00a0Ben\u2019Imana\u00a0follows a survivor who leads her community toward reconciliation \u2014 but doesn\u2019t extend that grace to her daughter\u00a0 Marie Cl\u00e9mentine Dusabejambo\u00a0undertook extensive research, over about a decade, for her first feature film,\u00a0Ben\u2019Imana\u00a0\u2014 a nuanced look at the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, told from the perspective of women involved in community reconciliation projects and conversations. Dusabejambo listened to harrowing stories from survivors and heard brutal confessions from regretful perpetrators. Initially, she kept crying \u2014 this was her community, too, after all, with real wounds unhealed. Then she realized: \u201cThey\u2019re not crying when they\u2019re telling me this. Why am I crying?\u201d That kind of hard-earned wisdom is all over\u00a0Ben\u2019Imana. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[423,307,641,2,116,164,60,797],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cannes","category-cannes-2026","category-cannes-film-festival","category-hollywood","category-international","category-movie-features","category-movies","category-un-certain-regard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}