God Sleeps in Rwanda

“At least there is democracy now,” says one woman at the end of this profoundly moving Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Short, narrated by actress Rosario Dawson, chronicling how five women are rebuilding both their personal lives and their nation in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Between April and July of that year, close to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the space of 100 days, leaving the survivors—over 70 percent female—to pick up the pieces. Working with no crew, aside from a translator (herself a survivor), filmmakers Kimberlee Acquaro and Stacy Sherman interweave interviews and footage of the women's lives on their journey from unspeakable tragedy to a newfound sense of courage, hope, and redemption. One interviewee recounts how after witnessing the death of her husband and all seven of her children, she was raped countless times and left for dead on a riverbank, only to survive and bear a child by one of her unknown assailants. She now spends her time comforting a friend—infected with HIV after being raped in 1994—who is dying of AIDS. Another woman, after losing her husband to AIDS, has become the first female police officer in Rwanda's national police force, but still can't afford the antiretroviral drugs for her also afflicted son. A third woman was only a child when she saw her father butchered and mother taken away to be killed, but she's inherited both her family's property and charge of her siblings—a right that didn't exist prior to the genocide, but is now available to the country's 65,000 underage heads of households. The film also recounts the fate of Rwanda's minister of family affairs circa 1994, who has the distinction of being the first woman ever charged with genocide as a crime against humanity. A wrenching, absorbing tale of extraordinary individual courage and survival, this is highly recommended. Editor's Choice. Aud: H, C, P. (A. Cantú)