MY NEIGHBOR MY KILLER
By Award-Winner Director Anne Aghion
Opens at Maysles Cinema – January 12-18, 2010
Part of DOCUMENTARIES IN BLOOM:
NEW FILMS PRESENTED BY LIVIA BLOOM
Anne Aghion’s internationally acclaimed documentary MY NEIGHBOR MY KILLER will open at Maysles Cinema in Harlem, January 12 through 18.
Focusing on Rwanda’s daring experiment in post- genocide justice, MY NEIGHBOR MY KILLER is a powerful look at the emotional process of learning to speak with your enemies. The director will be at select screenings for Q&A. Maysles Cinema is located at 343 Malcolm X Boulevard, between 127th and 128th Streets, New York, NY – for directions and show times see www.mayslesinstitute.org/cinema/calendar.html.
The theatrical run at Maysles Cinema follows presentation of the film on January 6th and 7th at the Museum of Modern Art’s “Contenders†series, honoring the films of 2009 they believe will “stand the test of time.â€Â  It also comes directly on the heels of the film’s first screenings in Rwanda last month, first at the office of the Prime Minister, then in the hillside hamlet where MY NEIGHBOR MY KILLER was filmed, and at a special screening for 600 women participating in a national unity program. This is part of an extraordinary worldwide journey for the film, which began in Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival in May and is taking it to the world’s major capitals as well as to conflict zones across Asia, Europe and Africa. In December, Kenya’s Human Rights Commission showed the film in three cities as part of that country’s own efforts at ethnic reconciliation.
To make MY NEIGHBOR MY KILLER, multiple award-winning director Anne Aghion spent close to ten years returning to a tiny rural community in Rwanda, remote from the country’s capital. There, over time, she focused on the emotional impact of the Gacaca (pronounced ga-CHA-cha)—the system of local open-air courts that adjudicates genocide crimes and returns killers to their homes in exchange for confessions.
MY NEIGHBOR MY KILLER is the feature companion to the “Gacaca Series†— a series of one-hour films that have garnered awards including an Emmy, a UNESCO Fellini prize, and more, and which have been recognized as seminal works not just on Rwanda but on the human, emotional aspect of the transition from conflict to peace.
MY NEIGHBOR MY KILLER has earned Aghion the 2009 Nestor Almendros Award from the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival and a nomination for the 2009 Gotham Award for Best Documentary. Based in Paris and New York, Anne Aghion is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. For more information, see www.myneighbormykiller.com
