2005 to 2025: When you make documentaries, you attempt to depict life. Somehow, I became a bank of knowledge of post-genocide life in Rwanda and post-colonial Africa. I have learnt to negotiate and celebrate the triumph of a simple but unique body that would not be.
What am I going to do next? I am going to sink into a feature narrative film of declension: a more literal – or modest – translation of my experimental short films at Columbia University in the City of New York. However vague, slightly modified or lost in translation from what is filmmaking is all about, the English and American critics will interpret.
2012 Best Documentary Africa Movie Academy Awards (Nominated)
2012 IDFA DOCS FOR SALE
2011 Best Documentary Feature Award (Winner), Santa Clara Commendation, US House of Represnetative – Congressional Special Recognition [Silicon Valley African Film Festival, 2011]
2009 Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media (USA)
Official selection: Silicon Valley Film Festival, Afrika Film Fest Leuven, International Documentary Film Amsterdam, Maine African Film Festival, Pan African Film Festival, Los Angeles
(released in 2006, 30 min) World Premiere: Tribeca Film Festival
Golden Impala Amakula Award for First Time Filmmaker (2006) Official selection: Maine African Film Festival, Cape Winelands Film Festival, Amakula Int’l Film Festival, Rwanda Film Fest, Zanzibar Int’l Film Fest
Gilbert Ndahayo’s documentary film, Rwanda: Beyond the Deadly Pit is an explosive work on what happened in Rwanda. It clearly makes every other film, based on the genocide that happened in Rwanda look like a caricature of some sort, whether fictitious or documentary. African Oscars, 2012
The film itself looked at the “greatest personal failures” of former President Bill Clinton as it followed Gilbert Ndahayo, a survivor of the genocide on a journey back to Rwanda to attempt to rebury all 52 of his immediate family who were murdered before confronting and giving forgiveness to the murderer of his father. Third International Genocide Conference, Sacramento State University, 2011
Rwanda: Beyond The Deadly Pit has been nominated for 2012 AMAA for Best Documentary. AMAA is The Africa Movie Academy Awards – the African Oscars – the continent’s most prestigious awards for filmmakers.The nominees were announced in Banjul, the capital of Gambia, at an exclusive ceremony attended by celebrities, top government officials and capitals of industry from Gambia and other African countries. For more information:http://www.ama-awards.com/news/nigeria-and-south-africa-lead-amaa-nominations
RWANDA: BEYOND THE DEADLY PIT is reviewed alongside Conrad’s work “Heart of Darkness (1902)” Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now (1972)” and Swedish acclaimed documentary filmmaker Peter Torbiörnsson “Last Chapter/Goodbye Nicaragua (2011)” in Dutch Review: “De Hel Is De Waarheid “.
GILBERT NDAHAYO, RWANDAN FILMMAKER 