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The idiot from the commission said no - Grey matter by Kivu Ruhorahoza (2011)
critique
rédigé par Katarina Hedrén
publié le 27/04/2013
Katarina Hedrén (Africiné)
Katarina Hedrén (Africiné)
Kivu Ruhorahoza, Filmmaker
Kivu Ruhorahoza, Filmmaker

Kivu Ruhorahoza's debut feature Grey Matter, shot in 2009 and 2010, tells three stories weaved into one narrative that covers three crucial elements of Rwanda sixteen years after the genocide that saw around 800,000 killed: victims, perpetrators and the unresolved trauma of an entire population.



The first strand of the story belongs to Balthazar (Hervé Kimenyi), a young, determined and frustrated filmmaker. Balthazar is struggling to make a film, which deals with what he calls "the cycle of violence on this ridiculous continent", in a climate where the only funding available is reserved for uplifting and awareness-raising stories. When Balthazar learns that the funding he was counting on will not come through, he tells no one, pays one more visit to his loan shark, and continues to prepare for the shoot.

The film's second strand follows a confused, lonely and nameless man (Jp Uwayezu), who is locked up in what seems to be a hospital room or a prison cell. His only contact with the outside world is a soft radio voice and hands that still his hunger and feed his rage from a distance.

The third story tells of Justine (Ruth Nirere) and her brother Yvan (Ramadhan Bizimana). The only surviving members of their family, they live in their parents' house. The beautiful and self-sacrificing Justine, whose brother has gone mad from fear and grief, knows of only one way to help him heal. Yvan, tortured by panic attacks and survivor's guilt, keeps on putting out imaginary fires that he was unable to extinguish years ago. He does not talk and refuses to take off his dark-visored helmet, though it does little to prevent his hallucinations.



Kivu Ruhorahoza interrogates the line between fiction and reality in a world where reality inspires fiction as much as the other way around. Balthazar is referencing Noé's Irreversible (2002) and Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) to evoke the cruel acts of 1994, and civil servants support artists who portray ideals instead of dysfunctional realities. In Ruhorahoza's and Balthazar's filmic universes, reality and the imagined are as blurred as they are in Yvan's confused microcosm. While the siblings and the madman are fictional characters in Balthazar's film, they are as real to the audience as Balthazar - whose non-fictional status is contested in an unexpected move - is.

Ruhorahoza suggests that only when we are prepared to look truth in the face, will we be able to overcome paralysis and stagnation. Like Werner Herzog, who considers manipulated versions of reality that capture it on a visceral level to be the most truthful ones, Ruhorahoza does not believe that truth is best communicated through fact.

Grey Matter is an accomplished and complex debut feature by a director, who is as passionate and impatient as his alter ego Balthazar. The well-read and self-taught Ruhorahoza has weaved together a story that brilliantly captures the intricacies and the magnitude of his country's trauma, and which contemplates the role of art in countries recovering from violent conflict.

[Read the filmmaker interview here]

Katarina Hedrén

"Review first published on Katarina's blog: In the Words of Katarina

Twitter: @KatarinaHedren

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