2007 – 97 min – Rwanda/New York – Kinyarwanda w/ English Subtitles – color
Distinctions
Jury Prize AFI Film Festival 2009. First film ever in Kinyarwanda language. “It is in every frame a beautiful and powerful film — a masterpiece.” –Roger Ebert
Synopsis
After stealing a machete from a market in Kigali, Munyurangabo and his friend, Sangwa, leave the city on a journey tied to their pasts. Munyurangabo wants justice for his parents who were killed in the genocide, and Sangwa wants to visit the home he deserted years ago. Though they plan to visit Sangwa’s home for just a few hours, the boys stay for several days. From two separate ethnic groups, their friendship is tested when Sangwa’s wary parents disapprove of Munyurangabo, warning that “Hutus and Tutsis are supposed to be enemies.”
Director’s Bio
A son of Korean immigrants, Chung grew up on a small farm in rural Arkansas, and then attended Yale University to study Biology. At Yale, with exposure to art cinema in his senior year, he dropped his plans for medical school and pursued filmmaking. MUNYURANGABO is his first feature film. He resides in New York with his wife Valerie, and manages Almond Tree Films, a production company he founded with his collaborators, Samuel Anderson and Jenny Lund.
Director’s Statement
Origin of the Project
In the summer of 2006, Samuel Anderson, Jenny Lund, and I taught a summer course in filmmaking and photography at a Christian relief base, YWAM, in Rwanda. Partnering with the organization’s existing work with local street kids and at-risk youths, we produced MUNYRANGABO as a project for a class of fifteen Rwandan students, allowing genocide orphans, returned refugees, the undereducated, and those barely making a living to become the cast and crew of MUNYURANGABO.
A Manifestation of our Encounters
Samuel Anderson wrote most of the script back home, with the understanding that the story would evolve to the truths we would eventually discover in Rwanda. After arriving in the country, our script became a nine-page outline, a manifestation of our encounters—from personal stories and concerns to passing conversations and reflections. The minimal outline allowed us to improvise scenes and all of the dialogue.
Improvisation
With directing, I am a strong believer in improvisation; I know the general form of the film I want to make, but I’m not sure how I will get from the beginning to the end. This requires a greater level of listening—to surroundings, actors, crew, and inspiration. I don’t think that this immediacy would be available to me if I relied heavily on the writing process. Instead of shaping the reality of the circumstances to that script, improvisation demands the opposite. Working in Rwanda reinforced this approach to filmmaking, since the exotic nature of the location left us with no other choice. As a result, I’ve learned through this film that filmmaking should be a little like jazz, in that one should work with how the materials, circumstances, problems, and epiphanies come; it’s a dynamic process that leaves no room for regret.
Recreating Memories
Our cast of non-professional actors inspired many elements of the script, and directing was often a work of recreating their lives. Naturally, this is a film that focuses on memory, a collective one, and it was a quest to discover spiritual elements within memory.
Rural Locations
Rwanda has seen a fair number of Western filmmakers who throw large sums of cash around; we simply didn’t have those resources, but the assumption for many city officials was that we had lots of money. We considered filming many of our scenes in the streets of Kigali, but because of bureaucracy (difficulty in getting permits, for example), we focused our story on rural locations.
Shot in Eleven Days
Our village location was also quite genuine. We found a location we liked, spoke with the owners of the little house, and even auditioned them for roles. They were remarkable actors, so we decided to give them a large part in the film as the parents of Sangwa. We filmed over the course of eleven days, with the cast and crew all living together and working passionately for this project. It is fair to say that through the experience we became a family—I adopted them, but more accurately, they adopted me.
First Feature Film in Kinyarwanda
MUNYUNRANGABO is the first narrative feature film ever made in the Kinyarwanda language. Directing in a foreign country and in a language I do not speak was actually an advantage, forcing me to work as an outsider. This guards against the conveyance of any personal ideas and truths that are relatively minor, allowing, instead, for an exploration of more universal matters that can connect a Korean American with a Rwandan. I hope that this connection would extend to you, the viewer.
Return to Kigali
Our new company, Almond Tree Films, continues to labor for Rwandan cinema, hoping that the next Rwandan film to play at Cannes will be directed by a native filmmaker. On the foundation of MUNYURANGABO, we will return to Kigali this summer to establish a cinema school and production center, working for our hope to become a reality.
Trailer
