Sometimes in April

This film (drama)Also known asSometimes in April，is aFrance, USAProducerwomen sex，At2005Released in year 。The dialogue language isEnglish, Kinyarwanda，Current Douban rating8.1(For reference only)。

"Sometimes in April" — a tragic film depicting the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which the Western world did not intervene to mediate. It was included in the competition section of the Berlin Film Festival and is one of two films about this atrocity in the 11-day festival. While Terry George's "Hotel Rwanda" focuses on the same background and theme, Raoul Peck presents the trauma of civil war through a different lens. Both films, along with "Karmen Gei," demonstrate the rising prominence of South African cinema. The vividly depicted bloody scenes of the genocide in "Sometimes in April" hold a much greater visceral impact than the similarly themed "Hotel Rwanda." This film, co-produced by the United States and Rwanda, is the first major film about the genocide of approximately 800,000 Tutsi and Hutu people, filmed on location in Rwanda and featuring a large number of local residents as extras. Haitian-born director and human rights advocate Raoul Peck stated that employing Rwandans who still vividly remember the disaster as extras could help foreign audiences better understand their inner fears. Peck, holding back tears, said, “Everything in the film is true. I think it’s a rare opportunity to capture this as the relationships and conflicts among different ethnic groups explode, and anything that could happen became reality.” The film tells the story of a Hutu soldier who becomes separated from his Tutsi wife and two sons during the initial chaos of the genocide in April 1994. He learns of their fate only years later when he encounters his brother Xavier, who is on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, accused of inciting violence through radio broadcasts. The film also mentions Debra Winger, a U.S. State Department official, who worked to persuade then-President Bill Clinton to take action. Another film on the same topic, "Hotel Rwanda," premiered earlier this week and is in the non-competition section of the Berlin Film Festival. Peck said he consciously chose to portray more vivid scenes of violence than "Hotel Rwanda." He stated, “My first goal was to make the film as brutally real as possible without turning the audience away. I need the audience; I need them to watch the entire film and complete this horrific journey. There were no cameras around when this planned genocide occurred.” Peck spent months researching in Rwanda and Tanzania, with some content of the screenplay derived from copies of tribunal hearings. He noted that some Rwandans involved in the film claimed they could not play the perpetrators, only the victims, because the tragedy from a decade ago still weighs heavily in their hearts. Peck mentioned that a team of five psychologists was on set 24 hours a day during filming. Belgian actress Carole Karemera, who plays a Tutsi victim in the film, said the production process served as a form of spiritual healing for many traumatized individuals. She remarked, “Only after enduring pain can you feel shame and become quiet. Now we are trying to talk about it and begin to believe in the rest of humanity again.”