In her TED 2007 talk, director Deborah Scranton detailed how she put cameras in the hands of soldiers fighting in Iraq to realize her acclaimed “The War Tapes” documentary.
The film powerfully casts the Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, fighting to expose the truth of what happened in 1994 (including the hidden role played by the French government) while trying to lead his country through a delicate reconciliation process — and to put in place the conditions for economic and social development. And an ordinary man, Jean Pierre Sagahutu, a genocide survivor scouring the countryside to find clues about his father’s unsolved murder.
As each relentlessly pursues the truth, they find themselves faced with a choice: to enact vengeance, or forgive. Scranton’s careful narrative succeeds in dissecting their struggles to uncover the foundations of what it means to forgive — as an individual, and as a nation — and to try to end hatred and violence.