My Neighbor, My Killer and The Reckoning, two HRW film festival reviews
The New Justice
When justice rings true, it has the power to silence and to awe. And it can mean a lot of things, from ‘making things right’ by your neighbor to ending a culture of impunity in which lives are destroyed without a thought. Two new films screening at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival explore the pursuit of justice in the 21st century. Justice in today’s world is no longer just about simple retribution but also about the restoration of entire societies.
My Neighbor, My Killer
Directed and produced by Anne Aghion
Gacaca Films, 2009. 101 minutes.
Anne Aghion’s My Neighbor, My Killer is a chilling, elegiac film that documents the struggle of a rural community in Rwanda to overcome the trauma of genocide. Over 100,000 perpetrators remained in prison ten years after 800,000 Tutsis were killed by Hutu militia in a few months in 1994. The masterminds of the genocide were removed to an international tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, but many lower level genocidaires remained in Rwanda. The government decided to conditionally release these prisoners and try them through a community court system called the Gacaca courts. Suddenly, victims of the genocide found themselves living once again next to their killers. And these killers did not come asking for forgiveness:
We were told they would approach us in peace, in their own time. But not one has so far darkened my door! My brother’s murderer lives just near our home. Why hasn’t he come to ask for forgiveness?
If My Neighbor, My Killer is a work of filmic poetry, The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court is fine prose. This film examines the turbulent origins of the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The tone is more educational than entertaining, but presents an air-tight case for the need for a credible international body of criminal justice.
