A Rwandan community faces the aftermath of genocide and takes faltering steps towards reconciliation in this award-winning debut film. 

Eighteen years after the horrific conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes, a tribunal is set up in 2012 to hear evidence about the atrocities. Pragmatic village leader Vénéranda urges forgiveness as she tries to build communication between the female survivors and the perpetrators’ families. But the relationships with her sister Suzanne and teenage daughter Tina gradually reveal the complexity of Vénéranda’s own experiences. 

Director Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s powerful debut won both the Caméra d’Or for best first feature and the FIPRESCI Prize at this year’s Cannes. Featuring excellent performances by a mainly non-professional cast, Ben’Imana is a compelling story of female experience, fortitude and the possibility of hope. 

‘Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s stunning debut feature, a decade in the making, wrestles with the mood in Rwanda 18 years after the 1994 genocide. Dusabejambo walks a tightrope with formidable grace in her reckoning with the legacy of genocide.’  – Sophie Monks Kaufman, Little White Lies