By Cooper Evoy
‘A Generation after Genocide’ is an ambitious in-progress project about Rwandan children affected by the genocide of 1994. It examines the healing power of sport, and how these children and survivors have used this soccer field as a means of reconciliation.
Even though the film has been three-years in the making, the finish line is still not in sight. For creators Jon Weiman and Torey Kohara, it has been one long learning experience that continues to this day. What originally began as a small project for a small organization has blossomed into what could potentially be the duo’s first feature-length documentary film.
When approached by the Narrative Therapy Centre of Toronto in 2008 to do a documentary on genocide survivors, Weiman had no idea where the project would lead.
“I did a documentary in 2006 on kids in Rexdale [a suburb of Toronto] who were addicted to drugs, and Narrative Therapy liked the work I did on that. They wanted me to go to Israel for a month, and then go to Rwanda for a month, and basically compare and contrast how Holocaust survivors dealt with grief and how Rwandan genocide survivors dealt with grief.”
Not a small task for a relatively novice filmmaker, still in the midst of completing a film degree at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. Regardless, Weiman set about creating a proposal and formulating ideas while waiting for the necessary funding to come through.
But the funding didn’t come. That, combined with scheduling issues on both ends, led to the project never growing beyond exchanged emails between the parties. It was at this point the project took on a new direction.
“I had told a friend at Queens about this project in passing, and he says, ‘you know I have a professor, Eugene, who I’ve become friends with who is a survivor of the genocide. You should at least meet him to pick his brain a little bit because if you’re going to do this project with Narrative Therapy you should at least know what you’re talking about.’”
While knowing a great deal about the Holocaust – his grandfather escaped from Auschwitz – Weiman knew relatively little about the Rwandan genocide. He arranged a meeting with Dr. Eugene Nshimiyimana, the formality of which Weiman greatly overestimated.
“I had all these questions written down, and I wanted to get his take, and after five minutes that all went away and it became a casual conversation,” Weiman says.
Dr. Eugene Nshimiyimana, a professor of French language and Francophone literature at McMaster University in Hamilton, had been teaching at Queen’s when first approached by Weiman.
Eugene Nshimiyimana speaks with his soccer players
“Jon came to me just to learn more about what soccer can be on a social level,” says Dr. Nshimiyimana.
During that initial meeting, Dr. Nshimiyimana told Weiman his story of using soccer to help heal the divide created by the genocide. In 1996, he started a soccer team for a group of Rwandan children. Having seen the political and social divide that had led to his country’s genocide, he wanted to play his part to ensure the next generation did not face similar circumstances.
“The history of Rwanda, it’s a history of division between Hutus and Tutsis, but kids don’t see life through those categories,” says Dr. Nshimiyimana. “After the genocide, there were a lot of suspicions between people, but among kids that wasn’t an issue. So bringing them together to play was my goal because I know if you don’t save young kids, you are just creating another tragic society.”
Intrigued by Dr. Nshimiyimana’s story, Weiman left the meeting and set out to inform his filmmaking partner, Kohara.
“He had grown up in sports his whole life,” says Weiman. “That wasn’t really my world. He can relate to that world more, the unifying power of sports.
“Eugene’s relationship with soccer and sport prior to, during, and after the genocide was a really, really powerful motivator for us,” says Kohara, also a Queen’s film student at the time. The two agreed they had an incredible story to tell, and decided to pursue the project.
Funding issues did not last long, as their unique idea attracted the interest of several production companies, including Kohara’s employer, Ontario Production Company (OPC). With the majority of funding locked down for an initial trip to Rwanda, the filmmakers prepared for their journey.
Having only done small projects previously, a documentary of this scale was something neither had experienced before and they admit they approached it with potentially overblown expectations.
“We were pretty idealistic,” Kohara says. “We thought there would be something there, and down the road we realized it wasn’t that cut and died. At the root of it all, we had an idea, but not a solid path to get to that idea.”
We went in as cowboys,” adds Weiman. “My thinking, at least, was that if we shot enough footage, a documentary would come from that.”
They travelled to Rwanda in the summer of 2009 with their team, equipment, and a general idea of what their documentary was about. They entered the country searching for stories that would play into their ideal narrative, which was the healing power of sport. Working with Dr. Nshimiyimana, they tried to encompass every side of the story into their film.
“When you talk about soccer and reconciliation, there’s a political side to consider, there’s a social side to consider, and there’s a psychological side to consider,” says Dr. Nshimiyimana. “It took us a lot of energy and collaboration to put all those levels together.”
Having worked so closely developing the project, Dr. Nshimiyimana felt comfortable that Weiman and Kohara would tell his story without portraying him in a way he was uncomfortable with – as a hero. Dr. Nshimiyimana believes that because most people view what happened in Rwanda as a tragedy, whoever does something about it will be portrayed as a hero. He only wants to be seen as part of a larger effort for reconciliation in his country, which the film’s narrative shows.
“We go from what I did, and we look into what other people did,” says Dr. Nshimiyimana. “That doesn’t mean what I did is bigger than what the other people did; it’s part of a general effort in the reconstruction of the country. We are all part of a society, and everybody brings his small stone to this big house.”
Dr. Nshimiyimana’s personal connection to the project gave the filmmakers access to their subjects right away, but he points out that it did not mean there weren’t questions.
“When you go on a project like that you don’t know what you are going to find,” says Dr. Nshimiyimana.
What Weiman and Kohara found was gaining people’s trust can be a difficult proposition for documentary filmmakers, as they are faced with the task of making the subject comfortable while also telling the most truthful story.
“The biggest thing is getting to know your subject, and allowing them to understand you’re not there to misrepresent them,” says Kohara. “But it’s difficult in a country like Rwanda where a) there aren’t so many westerners running around and b) there aren’t so many westerners running around with cameras.”
Despite the unfamiliar circumstances and the difficulties that accompany such an ambitious project, the duo and their team returned home after six weeks of shooting with what they felt was enough footage.
“When we got back, we kind of felt like a million bucks,” says Weiman. “Here we are, these students who made this film, we got on Canada AM, we were published in the Montreal Gazette, we were feeling like big shots.”
“But then we looked at our footage, and we were like, ‘what do we have here?’ It was a very weird thing when we got back and looked at the footage and said, ‘how do we put this together?’”
In hindsight, they agree that their first trip to Rwanda should have been done without cameras. Whether it be because of their inexperience making documentaries, or just getting caught up in their first production, they paid more attention to the aesthetic factors of the film as opposed to the most important part: the subjects.
“From my perspective, because we were trying to get this incredible narrative, we forgot about the human voices,” says Weiman.
In their initial interviews, the filmmakers took a very direct approach. Instead of getting to know the children, and digging deeper to explore each child’s approach to reconciliation, they asked the most straightforward questions possible. “Asking a kid directly, ‘how did soccer help bring the two sides together after the conflict?’ is a fine question to ask, but we never really asked, ‘who are you?’” Weiman says. “We never really got to their souls, as it were.”
Weiman acknowledges that these are things that a filmmaker can only learn through experience. “I don’t think we could have learned anything if we hadn’t gone and had these two years to process it.”
As both mature as filmmakers, they are also learning new things about their project and discovering the necessary steps needed to create the film they both imagined it would be.
They know their mistakes and know how to fix them, but the duo has made no return trips to Rwanda since their initial one in the summer of 2009. They both are up-and-coming commercial directors, operating under the production company Family-Style, and are bogged down with busy schedules.
Finding time for personal projects is difficult. However, the commercials that are preventing them from focusing on their documentary provide the means to pursue such personal ventures. “It’s the commercials that allow us to do stuff like this,” explains Kohara. “They are our livelihood, and you owe a certain amount of time to the people who are paying you.”
But that does not mean “out of sight”, out of mind. Both remain focused on completing their work, no matter how long it takes.
“I’m from the school of belief that there’s one way to make a film, and that is the right way,” says Kohara. “It’s completely separate from timelines, and budgets. You will know when your film is done.”
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