Defying Stereotyping Hutu People in The Rwandan Genocide in The Film, Kinyarwanda (2012)

Abstract

Summary Certain academic works and film productions on the Rwandan genocide appear to authorise a new canonicity that simplifies interracial relations between the Tutsi and Hutu people before and during the genocidal war. Kinyarwanda is a film that revises the depiction of Hutus as violent people, all eager to kill Tutsis. The film refuses to endorse this mythology and one-sided characterisations of Hutu/Tutsi relations. It shows that there were many Hutu people who perished because they had assisted Tutsi people. It is implied in the film that for film critics to label this category of selfless people Hutu moderates would be a misnomer. Hutus who assisted Tutsis are simply the heroes in the film. Mamdani has convincingly argued that, within the theatre of death in the Rwandan genocide, there were Hutu zealots, along with Hutus who were reluctant, those who we coerced and, most importantly, those who chose to hide Tutsis. The film Kinyarwanda defies the official Rwandese ideologies that stereotype Hutu people as guilty by association in respect of the Rwandan genocide. In this respect, the film’s authorial ideology is revisionist.