As We Forgive 1 comments

By Laura Bramon Good

When it comes to seeing Africa, many American filmmakers haven’t progressed much farther than W. Somerset Maugham’s sweaty-suited colonials of the Orient.

Exchange the moldering manses for U.N. compounds and frank racism for pity, and the situation of Maugham’s Empire-building Brits aligns quite neatly with that of today’s real and fictionalized white heroes-cum-voyeurs who descend to do good on the Dark Continent.

But while Maugham’s stories delve into the melancholia of distance, focusing on the Westerners who prop themselves up against stock South Asians, contemporary filmmakers often assume that white eyes and white voices can usher white audiences into a nuanced understanding of African life and culture. It’s no surprise, then, that documentaries about Africa often deify–and trivialize–Africans, coming dangerously close to portraying the “Half-Devil half-child” of Kipling’s famous poem.

As We Forgive, first-time filmmaker Laura Waters Hinson’s look at reconciliation in the wake of the Rwandan genocide, makes a clean break with this tendency. Currently screening throughout the country, As We Forgive is neither a memorial to pain nor a false altar for Western worship. Rather, it demands that viewers face the human grief of both repentant murderers and their victims’ survivors.

Rosaria and Chantale, two genocide survivors, are among the millions of Rwandans who lost entire families in the Hutu aggression against the Tutsis. Saveri and John, two solemn men, are murderers; one killed Rosaria’s sister and children, the other killed Chantale’s father. The men are among the 50,000 genocide criminals released from Rwanda’s glutted prisons in August 2003, when justice and reconciliation fell to the work of tribal courts, churches, and non-governmental organizations.

As We Forgive offers no easy answers, and it allows no precious idealism. Chantale’s torment, in particular, and John’s somber, steady plea for her forgiveness, is a drama whose consequence registers far deeper than the petty impulse to save. When Chantale and John finally sit down across from each other in a sun-lit room, honest viewers know that they have been on both sides of that table: as the trespassed, desiring vengeance, and as the one who has trespassed against another, desperate for peace.

Here the temptation to voyeurism is foiled. The viewer is drawn into a difficult, baldly spiritual dialogue. In the end, Hinson’s African subjects are the moral actors, and it is their difficult decisions that inspire us to face our own.

As We Forgive will screen in Washington, DC, and Minneapolis during the month of May. Information about future screenings is available at the film’s website.