Munyurangabo

MUNYURANGABO is flat-out brilliant.

Rwanda: ten years after the genocide. Two teenaged boys walk the road. One has a machete.

That machete, its mere existence, creates enough tension to turn what might be another ethnographic bore into an immersive and compelling story about these boys, about Rwanda, about Africa, about humanity's compulsion to divide into groups and find reasons to kill its own. This beautiful film draws us so completely into its world that we can sit, rapt, watching a family hoeing a field or two people repairing a wall. With the machete in the back of our minds, our attention never wanders. Surely, that's enough to commend the film. But MUNYURANGABO does more. It lays bare the heart of Rwanda, celebrates its culture, laments its past, and hopes for its future. Toward the end of the film, a poet looks at the camera and recites his work, a painful yet hopeful verse about where his country has been, where it is, and where it can go. The poet delivers his recitation in Kinyarwanda, the nation's language, and I came to believe that Kinyarwandan has a place among the world's most beautiful spoken tongues.

Do not miss this film.