Sometimes in April
by Raoul Peck
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Carole Karemera, Debra Winger, Idris Elba, Oris Ehuero, Pamela NomyeteDirector: Raoul Peck
Brand: HBO Home Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; Kinyarwanda (Original Language); French (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Unknown
Running Time: 140 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-10-06
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: 92748
Studio: HBO Home Video
Movie Reviews of Sometimes in April
Movie Review: Complex story told against backdrop of Rwandan massacre
Summary: 5 Stars
This 2005 HBO film made me think of Hotel Rwanda. Both films are about a middle class family with a Hutu husband and Tutsi wife who are caught up in the Rwandan massacre. But unlike Hotel Rwanda, the characters in "Sometimes in April" do not fare as well and the violence is all front and center, not somewhere offstage in order to make the film more palatable for Western audiences. The characters are also more complex which makes the story more compelling.
When the film opens, it is 2004 and it is raining, as it always does in April. Augustin, played by Idris Elba, remembers back 10 years, when his life changed forever by the events around him. Now, he lives in a nice house with a woman who, at first we think is his wife. She is pregnant with his child but they are not married. He is still wearing his wedding ring from his former marriage and it is difficult for him to move on to marry this new woman. There is a letter waiting for him which he is reluctant to read. It is from his brother who is on trial for genocide and who he has not seen for 10 years. He brother, played by Oris Erhuero, was a journalist who had a radio program. It was this radio program and the voice of his brother who spurred the Hutus on to murder. Although his brother never personally murdered anyone, his guilt is being decided by a tribunal, of which Debra Winger is one of the prosecutors.
Much of the film is a flashback to 1994. Once Augustin had a happy family and once he even thought he would be immune to the violence because he was in the Army. But this didn't happen. And the audience is now exposed to scene after scene of the violence which made me shudder in a way that Hotel Rwanda did not. It also made the two brothers very real and conflicted human beings who lived through a time where hard choices had to be made constantly. It is not a pretty picture, and it certainly is not about a hero who triumphantly saved his people. There is short scene in the film set in a hotel where the guests used the water in the pool to survive. This scene was played out in detail in Hotel Rwanda and also in a recent novel I read called "A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali " so I can only assume that this particular incident is based on fact. But most of the film was set in other places - in a Catholic girls school which Agustin's daughter attended, at the many roadblocks where citizens were murdered unmercifully, in a church where many tried to get refuge, in the swamps where dead were dumped and the living tried to survive. And, of course, at the tribunal itself which is trying to look for individuals to blame.
The two women in Augustin's life also had hard choices to make. And each of them performed heroic acts to save others. Pamela Nomvete Marimbe was a teacher in a school when the soldiers came. Carole Karemera is the wife who lost all memory of the acts committed on her family and later saved others by an heroic act of self sacrifice of her one. I was moved by their courage during this unspeakable time.
All of the actors playing Rwandans were excellent. I can't say the same for the actors playing U.N. inspectors, whose performances tended to be wooden. However, I think this might have been by design of the director and in no way changed the way I felt about this film. Too bad it was only shown on HBO and never got to the big screen. However, it is available on DVD. It is more than just a story about Rwanda. It is a story about brother, about family and about how people act when the unspeakable changes their lives forever.
Highly recommended. But certainly not for the squeamish.
Summary of Sometimes in April
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