''The Notebooks of Memory'' is the third

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

in a trilogy by

Anne Aghion Anne Aghion (born 1960) is a French-American documentary filmmaker. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Mac Dowell Colony Fellow and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Fellow. In 2005, she won an Emmy Award for her documentary film, documentary ...

examining the aftermath of the

Rwandan genocide The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu ...

Synopsis

's third film in her

Rwanda Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...

series concentrates on the local citizen-judges' tribunals, where they must weigh survivor accounts of the

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...

massacres against the perpetrators' testimony. On a lush Rwandan hillside, more than ten years after the 1994 genocide directed at wiping out the

Tutsi The Tutsi (), or Abatutsi (), are an ethnic group of the African Great Lakes region. They are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group and the second largest of three main ethnic groups in Rwanda and Burundi (the other two being the largest Bantu ethnic grou ...

population, a tiny rural community repeatedly meet on the grass for the

Gacaca court The Gacaca courts () were a system of community justice in Rwanda following the 1994 genocide. The term 'gacaca' can be translated as 'short grass' referring to the public space where neighborhood male elders (abagabo) used to meet to solve local p ...

trials, a judicial experiment aimed at bringing unity back to the country. Award-winning filmmaker

spent four years chronicling the trials, where perpetrators would barter confessions for shorter jail sentences.

References

External links

Official website
French documentary films Documentary films about the Rwandan genocide Films directed by Anne Aghion Kinyarwanda-language films 2009 films 2009 documentary films 2000s French films {{France-documentary-film-stub