(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)October 5, 2009

MAHWAH – On October 5th, Ann Aghion screened and led a discussion of her film “My Neighbor, My Killer” at Ramapo College of New Jersey Monday. The presentation was sponsored by Ramapo College’s Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Communication Arts Major with the support of the Office of Student Affairs Platinum Series.

Screened out of competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, “My Neighbor My Killer” charts the impact of the government’s open air Gacaca Tribunals in Rwanda as part of the attempt by survivors and perpetrators alike to reconcile after the genocide that tore apart the country through an open process of admission and foregiveness. Announced in 2001, and ending this year, the government put the Gacaca Tribunals in place with citizen-judges meant to try their neighbors and rebuild the nation.

“My Neighbor My Killer” has been critically acclaimed and was the winner of the 2009 Human Rights Watch Nestor Almendros Prize for courage in filmmaking. It has also been nominated for a Gotham Award in the documentary category. “My Neighbor My Killer” is the fourth and last in Ms. Aghion’s series of films about the genocide in Rwanda, one of which won an Emmy.

A graduate of Barnard College, Anne Aghion lives in New York and Paris.

Her other films include “Ice People,” a study of geologists working in Antarctica that she made in 2006, and her first film, “The Earth Moved Under Him,” that examines the lives of Nicaragua’s urban poor.

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