I was six months old when I survived the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda with my family and moved to Europe as a refugee. From my earliest memories, I had been told I was a survivor, but with no recollection of 1994 and not being able to live in Rwanda, I always wondered how people managed to coexist with each other after so much violence.
Two years ago, I decided to return, to meet people who had been through journeys of reconciliation. I met survivors who shared harrowing testimonies and the perpetrators who expressed their remorse.
It was the first time I had ever met people behind the atrocities and heard directly some of the horrific killings they had taken part in. What was more confronting was that some of them spoke openly about how long it took them to feel sorry for what they had done.
Towards the end of my trip, I was introduced to Émilienne Mukansoro, a therapist who facilitates healing circles on the land where she lost most of her family in the genocide. Mukansoro works with survivors, perpetrators and the post-genocide generation of Rwandans. “I do this here to bring life back where it was once lost,” she told me. I was invited into one of the healing groups she facilitated with female survivors.
On the surface, Rwanda seems to have managed to do the unthinkable: live in relative peace after approximately one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed from April to July 1994. Survivors and perpetrators live side by side, in a country that sets an example for reconciliation. But sitting in a healing circle and listening to these women’s stories, I saw another side of reconciliation: many people are still in pain from what happened to them in 1994. In this group, I witnessed the power of sharing these burdens in a safe space. A space where they didn’t have to put on a brave face and act as though they had been able to move on.
I also wanted to hear from young people who, like me, do not have memories of 1994. I sat in another healing circle with young adults and it was here that I heard some of the most devastating stories: people who were born from genocidal rape, who are stigmatised and often hide this part of their identity.
More than 10,000 people were born from rape after the genocide and countless more women were raped.
Mukansoro’s sessions were the first time that this group of young Rwandans, all, like me, approaching their 30s, had opened up about the burdens they had been carrying. Some were born from rape and were afraid of losing friends if they told their story; others had felt abandoned by their family due to the ways trauma had affected their parents, and had felt a lack of love and care.
Being at the session made me wonder that, if the silence continues and the effects of trauma are not tended to, what happens to the next generation? When pain is concealed, can it erupt into violence?
This became the starting point of my short documentary The Things We Don’t Say. The film documents a group of young adults in one of Mukansoro’s workshops leaning on each other to find the courage to confront family secrets at the heart of their difficult upbringings.
It follows 29-year-old Thierry, who was born from rape and struggled with his identity – but wants to heal his relationship with his mother. The horror she endured during the genocide and the loss of her family meant she struggled to bond with him. He in turn never felt her love growing up. In the film, they talk openly about difficult childhood memories of her taking her anger out on him, her hope that one day she’ll be able to apologise for it all – and that one day he will call her mum. The fact that he hasn’t been able to breaks her heart. Thierry says he took part in the film as a way to advocate for others facing similar trauma from their birth circumstances.
Too often there is a tendency in documentary film to glorify trauma or poverty, which perpetuates stereotypes about Africa and Rwanda. While pitching this film, one production company asked me to change the narrative in favour of a more extreme story. This feedback was the main reason I went on to make this film independently. I needed the freedom to break away from this narrative. I wanted to focus instead on the complexities of modern life – where love and lightness persist even within fractured, painful relationships, and what the possibility of healing looks like.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the genocide and 30 years since my family and I fled Rwanda.
There is so much to learn from a country that has had to rebuild itself from the ground up and ensure survivors and perpetrators can live – sometimes uneasily but peacefully – side by side. While The Things We Don’t Say is just a glimpse of one group of young people wrestling with their past and present, I hope the film sheds light on the lives of those born during this dark chapter and highlights the ongoing work needed to break the cycle of intergenerational pain caused by mass violence.
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Ornella Mutoni is a documentary film-maker
The Things We Don’t Say is a film by Ornella Mutoni and commissioned by Guardian Documentaries