Ben’Imana

Eighteen years after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, BEN’IMANA finds the residents of Kibeho emerging from a long silence. At the centre of this 2026 Cannes Caméra d’Or-winning film is Vénéranda, who devotes herself to community justice and reconciliation, helping others come to terms with the wounds of the past. But when an unexpected crisis enters her own family, the convictions she has built around forgiveness and healing begin to waver. Writer-director Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo brings this history into focus through an insider perspective and resists any easy resolution. At the heart of the film are scenes of Gacaca, traditional community trials held in the mountains, where what is spoken and what remains unsaid seem to amplify one another. Can a new era of truth begin here? Dusabejambo attends to the deeply private realities of grief, allowing certain things to linger in the shadows. The line “Back home, yesterday and tomorrow are named the same: ejo” encapsulates the film’s sensitive understanding of time, memory and inheritance. Through its recognition of the tension between the past and its embrace of what refuses to remain there, BEN’IMANA emerges as a layered meditation on trauma and survival. (Hyun Jin Cho)

Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo: YIZA (2011, K), DERRIÈRE LE MOT (2012, K), UNE PLACE POUR MOI (2016, K), ICYASHA (2018, K)