Yesterday I went to see Intore – My identity, the new documentary film, by Eric Kabera, on the last twenty years of Rwanda’s reconstruction, through music and dance. He says it is not finished yet. But I think it never will, for it is the story of a nation, and they are not finite…
I have seen it twice and I still want more, here is why:
Intore is told at the rhythm of Rwandan drums and the moves of Rwandan dancers of the same name. It will make you see the inevitable: that good always triumphs over evil. And leave you with a sense of celebration, of melancholy and of grief. You will cry, you will not laugh, and you will have Goosebumps.
Eric, the director, is a bold, clever, sophisticated and to some, complicated storyteller. He presents to us, in one film, a story with many layers. Like Rwanda, the country it depicts; the film is complex and elusive to the non-initiated.
It is full of surprises. Relentlessly leading the viewer to different discoveries; It is a visual adventure, travelled on an unpredictable and bumpy road; you will not relax, you will vibrate. Like Rwanda’s undulating mountains, It is a rollercoaster; contrasting cruelty and humanness in a seamless intermittence. It upsets our tranquillity, and challenges our faith in man,.
Intore is such an engaging experience, a poignant depiction of Rwanda’s beauty. The soundtrack is magic!
With a strong cast of both Rwanda’s greatest artists and the most ordinary men and women, it is a truly independent film, for it seeks not to be politically correct, but handsomely told to provoke thinking. It captures individual unedited stories.
It catches the Rwandan President in a rare moment of vulnerability; It reveals Corneil Nyungura to the Rwandan people for the first time.
It captures a twenty year journey of the reconstruction on a nation. The endeavour of a people to rise from the aches and live.
As it wounded up, I was left with both retrospection and perspective. It left me and everyone else with a strong opinion, unique to each one of us. There is one thing we unanimously agreed on. We should see it again. And again!
Posted 15th May 2014
