Sometimes in April

In Sometimes in April Raoul Peck explores yet another tragic chapter of the African continent’s history: the genocide in Rwanda. But Peck speaks plainly as he lifts the conflict from a local African level to the entire Western world. The film’s starting point is the international trials ten years after the inconceivable tragedy, with flashbacks to the brutal April days in 1994 when nearly one million of the population were brutally killed. The action revolves around the Hutu Augustine, his politically stubborn brother Honoré and Augustine’s Tutsi wife Jeanne. Peck mercilessly describes how the UN forces and the international community show an inability to act that has fateful consequences. Storytelling-wise, Peck alternates between fiction and documentary devices, which contributes to the film’s feel of something almost unpleasantly real and relevant. Sometimes in April is produced by HBO, but such an important and necessary film doubtless deserves a larger audience, like the more well-known Hotel Rwanda.