Rwanda: Beyond The Deadly Pit, a documentary about the Rwanda massacre, will be screened 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 23 in the Winifred Moore Auditorium at Webster University, 470 E. Lockwood, with producer/director Gilbert Ndahayo in attendance.
Ndahayo lost 52 members of his close family in the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda that took the lives of more than a million people in the spring of 1994. His film follows his three-year journey to locate and confront the men who are believed to have killed his family. The film includes untold stories of the nuns who witnessed the slaughter and rare footage of the alleged perpetrators filmed in a traditional court.
“Ndahayo’s documentary movie is about forgiveness, what happened during the genocide, and how the survivors and perpetrators deal with each other now,” said event organizer Olive Mukabalisa, an international relations graduate student from Rwanda.
Ndahayo was 17 when the violence broke out, a young man interested in hip-hop and athletics. On April 10, 1994, Interahamwe (a Hutu militia death squad) stormed a convent where Ndahayo’s parents had sought refuge. The killers ransacked the convent, rounded up about 153 people, including his parents, and murdered them. They then dumped the bodies in a pit and burned the corpses. Ndahayo narrowly survived by running away.
Ndahayo received training as a filmmaker by director Mira Nair (Mississippi Masala) and Misan Sagay, who wrote Oprah Winfrey’s Their Eyes were watching God.
His debut short Scars Of My Days premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival to an audience that included former U.S. President Bill Clinton and President of Rwanda Paul Kagame. He has directed, co-directed and and/or produced several other films and is planning a trilogy of films and a memoir about the genocide.
He is the first Rwandan to be nominated for an African Movie Academy Awards, referred to as the “African Oscars.”
Ndahayo studied history and psychology at Kigali Institute of Education. He migrated to New York City in 2008, and was admitted to Columbia University’s School of the Arts where he is pursuing a Master’s in Fine Arts in film directing.
