06/10/2023 - The new documentary from Belgian director Bernard Bellefroid questions the way a village can remain a community, when victims and perpetrators rub shoulders every day

Bernard Bellefroid presents, in the Official Competition of the Namur International French-Language Film Festival (FIFF) and in a world premiere, his new documentary, One of the Thousand Hills [+see also:
interview: Bernard Bellefroid
film profile]. By exploring the destinies of three children murdered during the Rwanda genocide, the film questions the way a village can remain a community, when victims and perpetrators rub shoulders every day.

Fiacre, Fidéline and Olivier were 4, 5 and 9 years old respectively. Like so many others, they were murdered by their neighbours during the genocide. Like many others, too, the memory of them was annihilated, their pictures torn apart, their traces burnt. Who, why, how, where? So many questions that have remained unanswered for the family’s sole survivor, the children’s grandfather, whom the director had met while shooting his first film, Rwanda les collines parlent, on this Rwandan hill among many others. At the time, Bernard Bellefroid hadn’t dares promise the old man, who has since passed away, that he would be able to shed light on these events. But the idea stayed in the back of his mind, until it became the basis for this new film, an impossible (in)quest for the truth, a crazy project to keep alive the memory of the disappeared, the crimes against whom have been denied. 

In 2005, a decade after the facts, Rwanda launched a big campaign through the Gacaca community justice courts aiming to re-establish justice, rediscover the truth, and initiate a process of reconciliation. Justice was then served, but under complex conditions where the judges, who lived in the village, were also in some way involved, being more or less close to the accused. Although some people were convicted, this often happened without lifting the veil on the whole truth, and with the accused minimising the facts or shifting the blame on others, frustrating the survivors’ desire to access the truth. 

By reviving the memory of three children, by retracing the steps of their suffering, which took place under the eyes of the entire village that, up until now, said nothing, Bernard Bellefroid questions the very possibility of living together when victims and perpetrators rub shoulders every day. To bring back to life Fiacre, Fidéline and Olivier, whose time on earth seems to have been erased, he calls for the memories of the community and retraces their journey during the last days of their lives, in search of the traces that are missing. A portrait through an absence, one that seeks to fill the gaps and that also questions the responsibility of each individual in collective tragedies. Through sometimes confrontational choices of mise en scène, the film brings back to life, in an ephemeral way, these three children who also represent a thousand others. In doing so, it also questions the limits of the truth. What to do with its violence, and is reparation possible? The film re-establishes the indisputable nature of facts: between two cypress trees, three children were killed, like nearly a million others. 

One of the Thousand Hills was produced by La Compagnie Cinématographique (Belgium), in co-production with Tchin Tchin Production (France), Panache Productions (Belgium) and Les Productions du Souffle (Belgium). The film is sold by Belgian Docs, and should be released in Belgium in early 2024, a few weeks before the commemorations for the thirtieth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. 

(Translated from French)