Birds Are Singing in Kigali (2017)

Director
Joanna Kos-Krauze; Krzysztof Krauze

Main cast
Jowita Budnik; Eliane Umuhire; Witold Wieliński

Genres
Drama

Description
We meet ornithologist Anna in 1994 just as genocide is raging in Rwanda, perpetrated by the majority Hutus against the Tutsis. Anna manages to save the daughter of a colleague whose family has been murdered, and she takes her to Poland. But the woman returns to Rwanda to visit the graves of her loved ones. The director originally worked on the movie with her husband Krzysztof Krauze (My Nikifor – Crystal Globe, KVIFF 2005), but after his death in 2014 she eventually finished this challenging picture alone.


Similar movies

Inspired by true events, this film takes place in Rwanda in the 1990s when more than a million Tutsis were killed in a genocide that went mostly unnoticed by the rest of the world. Hotel owner Paul Rusesabagina houses over a thousand refuges in his hotel in attempt to save their lives.
In April 1994, the middle-aged Canadian journalist Bernard Valcourt is making a documentary in Kigali about AIDS. He secretly falls in love for the Tutsi waitress of his hotel Gentille, who is younger than him, in a period of violent racial conflicts. When the genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus in Rwanda begins, Bernard does not succeed in escaping with Gentille to Canada. When the genocide finishes in July 1994, Bernard returns to the chaotic Kigali seeking out Gentille in the middle of destruction and dead bodies. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
A young Tutsi woman and a young Hutu man fall in love amid chaos; a soldier struggles to foster a greater good while absent from her family; and a priest grapples with his faith in the face of unspeakable horror.
"Africa United" tells the extraordinary story of three Rwandan children who attempt to realize the dream of their life: to attend the opening ceremony of the FIFA World Cup 2010 at Johannesburg. But the problems begin when Fabrice, Dudu and Béatrice get on the wrong bus and end up in Congo. Without papers, without money, they are brought into a children's refugee camp. But with incredible ingenuity, a some guts and a poster for the World Cup as a map, our heroes escape from the camp and leave to pursue their dreams, bringing with them a "dream team" of refugee children to help them through a series of exciting adventures. During this journey of 5000 km through seven countries, the film reveals an unseen Africa.
An ex-mercenary turned smuggler. A Mende fisherman. Amid the explosive civil war overtaking 1999 Sierra Leone, these men join for two desperate missions: recovering a rare pink diamond of immense value and rescuing the fisherman's son conscripted as a child soldier into the brutal rebel forces ripping a swath of torture and bloodshed countrywide.
Justin Quayle is a low-level British diplomat who has always gone about his work very quietly, not causing any problems. But after his radical wife Tessa is killed he becomes determined to find out why, thrusting himself into the middle of a very dangerous conspiracy.
Grier and Haig are thieving mercenaries who engineer a prison break from the outside.
The films tells the story of an un-named Indian Muslim, who helps illegal refugees from both India and Pakistan to cross the border through the Great Rann of Kutch. The film is attributed to have been inspired by the short story "Love Across the Salt Desert" by Keki N. Daruwalla.
A crusading psychiatrist battles a sadistic female warden to improve conditions at a women's prison.
Debra Winger, Oris Erhuero and Idris Elba star in this drama framed by the Rwandan genocide.
Centers on a group of weary Middle Eastern refugees who have made their way to Turkey to apply for European visas.
Torn straight from the headlines, Michael Winterbottom's compelling and prescient 'In This World' follows young Afghan Jamal and his older cousin Enayat as they embark on a hazardous overland trip from their refugee camp at Peshawar, north-west Pakistan. Entering Turkey on foot through a snowy, Kurdish-controlled pass, the pair again take their lives into their hands and face suffocation when they are locked in a freight container on a ship bound for Italy. From there they plan to travel on to Paris, the Sangatte refuge centre and ultimately asylum in London.
A serpentine day in the life of ten seemingly disparate women: a porn star, a flight attendant, a psychiatrist, a masseuse, a bartender, a pair of call girls, etc. All of them with one crucial thing in common. Trouble.
The story of Dian Fossey, a scientist who came to Africa to study the vanishing mountain gorillas, and later fought to protect them.
Vasthuhara (Malayalam: വാസ്തുഹാര English: The Dispossessed) is a Malayalam social film by the late G. Aravindan which looks into the lives of partition refugees from East Bengal to West Bengal.
The story centers on a group of gossipy, high-society women who spend their days at the beauty salon and haunting fashion shows. The sweet, happily-wedded Mary Haines finds her marriage in trouble when shop girl Crystal Allen gets her hooks into Mary's man.
Two westerners, a priest and a teacher find themselves in the middle of the Rwandan genocide and face a moral dilemna. Do they place themselves in danger and protect the refugees, or escape the country with their lives? Based on a true story.
Jordan, 1967: displaced to a refugee camp after the occupation of their West Bank village, an eleven-year old boy and his mother enact the emancipating dream that every refugee has imagined countless times, in Annemarie Jacir's passionate and moving follow-up to her prize-winning debut Salt of This Sea. (TIFF)
Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre, also called Men Behind the Sun 4, is a 1994 Hong Kong film directed by Mou Tun Fei and is in many ways considered to be a follow up to the 1987 shockumentary film, Men Behind the Sun. The movie depicts the events behind the Nanking Massacre committed by the Imperial Japanese army against Chinese citizens and refugees during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Like Men Behind the Sun, the film was both criticized and praised for its brutal portrayal of the Japanese atrocities, such as the notorious contest to kill 100 people using a sword, during the early and late stages of World War II, but at the same time was questioned over historical accuracy and violence which gave the film a more exploitation feel to it.
In a time when "The West" pretty much ends in Texas and only California is slowly being populated by the white men, there's a severe lack of women among the workers on Roy Whitman's farm in the California Valley. So he goes back east to Chicago to recruit 150 women willing to become wives for his employees. From the candidates he selects 138 who seem able to survive a months long journey across "The Great American Desert" and the Rocky Mountains. Written by Tom Zoerner
Canadian Lt. General Romeo Dallaire was the military commander of the UN mission in Rwanda and this movie is personal and, all too true, story of his time there during the genocide of 1994. It is not quite as moving as the earlier Hotel Rwanda and is less geared to drama and emotional manipulation, but it is still grim and upsetting.
Two young men are seriously affected by the Vietnam war. One of them has always been obsessed with birds - but now believes he really is a bird, and has been sent to a mental hospital. Can his friend help him pull through?
Dr. Sullivan Travis is a man at the top of his game, a rich and successful Dallas gynecologist whose "religion" is women. Dr. T. worships women. In his immediate family and in his office, they surround him. He is loving and giving to each and every one at all times -- he is their savior. And sure enough, as in the story of Job, one day a higher force decides to test his faith. Once a man in complete control of his universe, Dr. T. now finds himself buffeted by chaos and confusion.
Based in Calcutta during its most unsettled times in the 1970s, the film deals with the inseparable life of Bikram and Bala. The story of 2 boys, boys who became refugees. Refugees who became gun couriers. Gun Couriers who became coal bandits, coal bandits who became Calcutta's Most Loved, Most Celebrated, Most Reckless, Most Fearless, Most Powerful! A story of two happy-go-lucky renegades who came to be known as...GUNDAY!
Set in mid-Europe sometime in the late 18th century where Mytyl (Shirley Temple), the bratty daughter of a woodcutter (Russell Hicks), finds a unique bird in the Royal Forest and selfishly refuses to give it to her sick friend. That night, she is visited in a dream by a fairy named Berylune (Jessie Ralph ) who sends her and her brother Tyltyl (Johnny Russell) to search for the Blue Bird of Happiness. To accompany them, the fairy magically transforms their dog Tylo (Eddie Collins), cat Tylette (Gale Sondergaard), and lantern ("Light") into human form. The children have a number of adventures. The dream journey makes Mytyl awake as a kinder and gentler girl who has learned to appreciate all the comforts and joys of her home and family.
Film offers a new take on the Rwandan genocide, through the first person experience of one woman as the horror descends.
A tale about Vietnamese refugees sent to an orientation camp on the Camp Pendleton Marine Base in California, 'Green Dragon' focuses on a young boy and his sister. Set in 1975, the film chronicles the stories told to the two children by other refugees in the camp and of Tai Tran, who dares to introduce himself to Sergeant Jim Lance. In developing a relationship with Lance, Tran is able to improve
Downed English airmen hide out with women in a Nazi concentration camp in France.
To Kill A Mockingbird is the film adaptation of the classic book by Harper Lee. The film tells the story of a child in a small American town in the 1930’s where color prejudice, racial hatred, and taking the law into your own hands were everyday events. Gregory Peck would receive an Oscar for his excellent portrayal of a single father named Atticus Finch.
Vildhundarna is a drama far away from the Swedish reality. It's about four young people on the outermost, with norms dispersed, the only survivors in a nameless city, in a nameless country. Vildhundarna could take place in the former Yugoslavia, or why not Warszawa in 1944 or Rwanda...?
After killing a prison guard, convict Robert Stroud faces life imprisonment in solitary confinement. Driven nearly mad by loneliness and despair, Stroud's life gains new meaning when he happens upon a helpless baby sparrow in the exercise yard and nurses it back to health. Despite having only a third grade education, Stroud goes on to become a renowned ornithologist and achieves a greater sense of freedom and purpose behind bars than most people find in the outside world.
There's more to Ana Garcia than meets the eye. Should she leave home, go to college and experience life? Or stay home, get married, and keep working in her sister’s struggling garment factory? It may seem like an east decision, but for 18 year-old Ana, every choice she makes this summer will change her life. At home, she is bound to a mother who wants her to become someone she's not. But at school, she's encouraged by a teacher who sees her potential and adored by a boyfriend who loves her for who she is. Right now, Ana may be making clothes for less shapely women. But she's about to discover that real women take chances, have flaws, embrace life, and above all, have curves!
The women of Troy face enslavement after the fall of their city.
Sometimes it takes a child or two to fix the adult problems! Siems mother and father are divorced , but his father Rik has found love again , and be married to Winnie's mother Tosca . Siem loves Winnie , so when the relationship between Rik and Tosca begins to creak, devises the two children , a plan designed to get parents to get back together ; they make a movie with good advice about love . And what a movie ! The small movie clips bubbles of love and creativity , both in front of and behind the camera . We will diligently around the genres when Siem and Winnie must interpret many of love . A sweet , funny and sensitive film that is about to stick together and keep each other - and each other's differences , not least .
A dramatization of one man's rescue of Jewish refugees in the Nazi-occupied Polish city of Lvov. In Darkness tells the true story of Leopold Soha who risks his own life to save a dozen people from certain death. Initially only interested in his own good, the thief and burglar hides Jewish refugees for 14 months in the sewers of the Nazi-occupied town of Lvov (former Poland).
A luxury liner carries Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany in a desperate fight for survival.
A pair of peasant children, Mytyl and her brother Tyltyl, are led on a magical quest for the fabulous Blue Bird of Happiness by the Fairy Berylune. On their journey, they are accompanied by the humanized presences of a Dog, a Cat, Light, Fire, Bread, and other entities.
Emanuelle, a reporter, comes just a little too close to exposing a corrupt official, and is sent to prison on trumped-up charges. In the prison, the inmates are constantly humiliated and tortured by the prison staff. Overly affectionate prisoners are forced underwater, while others are obliged to look on. Emanuelle finds an enemy in the deranged Albina, who "runs the prison." For the pleasure of the warden, Emanuelle and Albina are forced to fight each other with knives. Bad becomes worse when four men awaiting execution escape and take over the prison. Gore flows like water.
Weapons presents a series of brutal, seemingly random youth-related killings over the course of a weekend in a typical small town in America, and tragically reveals how they are all interrelated.
In the midst of the Mariel boat lift -- a hurried exodus of refugees from Cuba going to America -- an immigration clerk accidentally presumes that dissident Juan Raul Perez and Dorita Evita Perez are married. United by their last name and a mutual resolve to emigrate, Dorita and Juan agree to play along. But it gets complicated when the two begin falling for each other just as Juan reunites with his wife, Carmela, whom he hasn't seen in decades.
A businessman finds himself trapped at a hotel and threatened by women en masse.
Beirut, 1982: a young Palestinian refugee and an Israeli fighter pilot form a tentative bond in their attempt to make their way across war-torn Lebanon back to their home.
Wealthy Mary Haines is unaware her husband is having an affair with shopgirl Crystal Allen. Sylvia Fowler and Edith Potter discover this from a manicurist and arrange for Mary to hear the gossip. On the train taking her to a Reno divorce Mary meets the Countess and Miriam (in an affair with Fowler's husband). While they are at Lucy's dude ranch, Fowler arrives for her own divorce and the Countess meets fifth husband-to-be Buck. Back in New York, Mary's ex is now unhappily married to Crystal who is already in an affair with Buck.
American journalists in Sudan are confronted with the dilemma of whether to return home to report on the atrocities they have seen, or to stay behind and help some of the victims they have encountered.
Two peasant children, Mytyl and Tyltyl, are led by Berylune, a fairy, to search for the Blue Bird of Happiness. Berylune gives Tyltyl a cap with a diamond setting, and when Tyltyl turns the diamond, the children become aware of and conversant with the souls of a Dog and Cat, as well as of Fire, Water, Bread, Light, and other presumably inanimate things. The troupe thus sets off to find the elusive Blue Bird of Happiness.
Iris invites her friend Jack to stay at her family's island getaway after the death of his brother. At their remote cabin, Jack's drunken encounter with Hannah, Iris' sister, kicks off a revealing stretch of days.
Jess Bhamra, the daughter of a strict Indian couple in London, is not permitted to play organized soccer, even though she is 18. When Jess is playing for fun one day, her impressive skills are seen by Jules Paxton, who then convinces Jess to play for her semi-pro team. Jess uses elaborate excuses to hide her matches from her family while also dealing with her romantic feelings for her coach, Joe.
Dr. Ethan Powell, an anthropologist, is in Africa studying apes when he is lost for two years. When he is found, he kills 3 men and puts 2 in the hospital. Cuba Gooding's character is a psychiatrist who wants to take up the task of trying to get Dr. Powell to speak again and maybe even stand judgment at a trial for his release from prison of mental cases. Along the way, Cuba has to deal with also helping the mental patients that are being abused and neglected. In this process Cuba learns a few things about himself and life, and so does Anthony Hopkins character, Dr. Powell.
Air America was the CIA's private airline operating in Laos during the Vietnam War, running anything and everything from soldiers to foodstuffs for local villagers. After losing his pilot's license, Billy Covington is recruited into it, and ends up in the middle of a bunch of lunatic pilots, gun-running by his friend Gene Ryack, and opium smuggling by his own superiors.
A down-and-out restaurateur and his neighbor hatch a plan to lure luminaries to their small Newfoundland town.
A cab driver finds himself the hostage of an engaging contract killer as he makes his rounds from hit to hit during one night in LA. He must find a way to save both himself and one last victim.
Swan is a lonely Serbian refugee in Belgrade. He hopes for a visa to follow his long-lost fiancée to Chicago, but winds up at the Happy Millennium dating agency. A warm romantic comedy with a twist.
A fading actor best known for his portrayal of a popular superhero attempts to mount a comeback by appearing in a Broadway play. As opening night approaches, his attempts to become more altruistic, rebuild his career, and reconnect with friends and family prove more difficult than expected.
Liz has missed an appointment to have an abortion. She has to keep her child, and neither her boyfriend Geoff nor child's father Neil are too happy about it. She can not decide which partner is better for her, and Neil makes a proposal to her when they attend the wedding of her best friend Prue and Mike. She probably prefers Geoff, but he is preoccupied with his girlfriend Bryony, who returned from abroad. Another friend, Ant, has written a script for documentary film, which is directed by a German and in which topless women, well, talk about their lives.
True Women is a sweeping saga of love, war and adventure. Spanning five decades from the Texas Revolution through the Civil War, Reconstruction and beyond, True Women is the story of the love, friendship, survival and triumphs
Auschwitz is a hard-hitting war film which shows life as it really was at the death camp.
After getting a green card in exchange for assassinating a Cuban government official, Tony Montana stakes a claim on the drug trade in Miami. Viciously murdering anyone who stands in his way, Tony eventually becomes the biggest drug lord in the state, controlling nearly all the cocaine that comes through Miami. But increased pressure from the police, wars with Colombian drug cartels and his own drug-fueled paranoia serve to fuel the flames of his eventual downfall.
Lily and Alison face a life-changing event after they leave their Salton Sea home and follow the boys they meet back to Los Angeles.
Thirteen women who were schoolmates send to a swami for their horoscopes. Little do they realize that Ursula, a half-breed Asian, is using her hypnotic powers over the swami and them to lead them or their families to their deaths. It seems that she too went to their school, but was forced to leave by their bigotry, and is exacting revenge. Will she be stopped in time to save Laura's son, Bobby?
The film tells different stories in a kind of parallel Germany about love, affection and hatred.

© Valossa 2015–2024