Kinyarwanda screens today at Mercury Cafe

In 1994 there was a mass killing in the central African country of Rwanda, where the two main ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi, were in conflict. After the assassination of the country's president, the Hutu population began a systematic attack on the Tutsi; the deaths over over 500,000...

By Noah Reynolds

July 28, 2013

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In 1994 there was a mass killing in the central African country of Rwanda, where the two main ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi, were in conflict. After the assassination of the country's president, the Hutu population began a systematic attack on the Tutsi; the deaths over over 500,000 people on both sides of the conflict resulted.

Initially, the international media offered little coverage of the genocide, and not much early documentation exists. But survivors have recounted the horror they witnessed through books, interviews and films.

In 2011 writer/director Alrick Brown created a dramatic romance set against the background of this war: A young Tutsi woman and a young Hutu man fall in love in a story akin to Romeo and Juliet. Brown's Kinyarwanda premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award for Best International Feature Film. To that movie will screen at the Mercury Cafe, in an event organized by Colorado Committee on Africa and the Caribbean, a social injustice and human rights organization. The goal is to widen the general public's knowledge on the social, economic and political comprehension of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.

The film screens at 2 p.m.; there's a suggested $5 donation to attend.

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