Ben’Imana

Director Marie Clémentine Dusabejambo’s film isn’t challenging for its harrowing, explicit descriptions of violence from victims, but for the way her screenplay (co-written with Delphine Agut) offers no clear resolution to inter-community tensions even decades removed from crimes.

Ben’Imana is a film that works by accretion, layering its stories, characters and themes like the colourful textiles seen in robes, scarves, curtains, bedcovers, school uniforms, or, in one devastating scene, the torn clothes of massacred children, unearthed in a garden.

Ben’Imana contains whole worlds in one very specific here-and-now.

While hope on the horizon is presented, this rich, deeply moving drama doesn’t shy away from forgiveness being something that cannot be easily forced, even when the will may be there, however far buried.

Ben’Imana is a stunning, gorgeously assembled film about a people faced with a level of emotional labor that no one should ideally be forced to surmount.