Why is the film named "Kamenge?"
The movie takes the name from the biggest and the poorest quarter of the Northern Quarters of Bujumbura, the capital city of Burundi, because most part of the movie is filmed in those quarters and speak about the situation and the opinion of the people living there.
What are the techniques and special technologies that you used in this film?
We used two cameras HDV with professional michrophones and nothing more; basically we tried to film most of the things with a tripod to give to the images a more cinematographic style.
How did come up with the main idea of the film?
We went to Burundi to make an institutional video for an italian NGO, but when we were there we understood that we could have tried to give a voice to the opinions, the anger and the hopes of all the people that live in the Northern Quarters, because nobody in the world care about their country and we could have helped them to let the world know which is the social and political situation of Burundi. Lately, when we came back to Europe we knew about Alexis Sinduhije in an interview on a Spanish newspaper, so we decided to try to meet him and we arranged with him to make an interview in France; one week after he went back to Burundi and he was jailed just for expressing his opinions. In that moment we decided we had to follow his story and suddenly he became the main character of the film, because what he was passing through was depicting perfectly the situation of lack of freedom and democracy in his country.
What is the message you would like deliver from this film?
I think in the film we let people speak and express their opinion about the social and political situation of their country, Burundi. We also show the struggle of a man that put his life at stake to try to change the thing in his country. But in the building up of the plot, we also express our personal opinion of the situation, so I could say that the message we want to deliver is that like in many other countries around the world, in Burundi the democracy is only what appears in the surface of the empty words of the political class but the reality is very different; the reality is that people that have the power try to do as much as they can to enrich themselves, oppressing the rest of the population and use the ethnical conflict issue to justify the need of control over the country.
Is this the first time you participate in this festival?
Yes because this is our first documentary.
Did the film participate in other international festivals?
Yes. The film already participated in the: “6th Festival Internacional de Cine de los Derechos Humanos (Bolivia)”, the “1st DocUtah International Documentary Festival 2010 (Utah-USA)”, “5th MiradasDoc international Documentary Festival 2010 (Tenerife-Spain)”, “15th Amnesty International Documentary Festival 2010 (Vancouver-Canada)”. And it has just been selected to participate in the “8th International Human Rights Films Festival of Paris 2011 (Paris-France)”.
What are the awards the the film has won?
None until this moment.
Why did participated in Cairo Human Rights Film festival? and specially why Egypt?
Because I think that our film speaks about human rights issues that are the main topics of the Festival and is about an African country and Egypt is an important and particular African country, because it represent the conjunction among Africa and Middle east, so we thought that our film could be appreciated in the Cairo Human Rights Film Festival.
What is the human rights' cause that the film present?
I think there are many human rights causes presented in the film, but the story we tell focuses on the right of freedom to express thoughts and ideas and the attempt of the Burundian government to silence or eliminate people that try to criticize the government or try to build up a political debate about the situation of the country.
And, how did you present it or express that idea?
We express that idea through the opinion of many people living in the Northern Quarters of Bujumbura, the capital city of Burundi, that are the poorest quarters and where the conflicts are more visible. But most of all we present that idea telling and following as closed as we could the story of Alexis Sinduhije, his fight for expressing his opinion and his attempt to change the things in his country.
What are the obstacles that you faced while making this film?
We faced many obstacles; first of all when we were in Burundi was quite dangerous to film around in the Northern Quarters, because the situation was very tensed and sometimes there were battles between the government troupes and some rebels, so we had to be careful. Later when we knew Alexis had been jailed we had to try to find out the way to tell his story through images, so we try to go back to Burundi again but some members of the United Nations advice us to don’t go because with the work we were doing we could have been a target; so we contacted with a Burundian video reporter friend of Alexis asking him to record videos of what was happening; we also face some difficulties to go back to France to interview Alexis’ wife, because she was scared that the documentary could have complicated more the things.
But since the beginning we believed that we were doing the right thing, we had to do our best to show the world what was happening in that little country of Africa and finally we convinced everybody to collaborate.
