University of Pittsburgh to Host Screening of Anne Aghion's "My Neighbor, My Killer" Oct. 6

PITTSBURGH-Award-winning filmmaker Anne Aghion will be at Pitt to screen her film My Neighbor, My Killer," a feature-length film on the Gacaca (Ga-CHA-cha) in Rwanda. The" free public screening will be held at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 6 in the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium, 650 Schenley Dr., Oakland; it is part of the Ford Institute for Human Security's Speaker Series.

Praised for her portrayal of the people and places she covers, Aghion spent nearly a decade on the film, which was an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009.

Hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutus wiped out the country's Tutsi minority in 1994, according to the film's Web site (www.anneaghionfilms.com). Local 'patrols' massacred lifelong friends and family members, often with machetes and improvised weapons. The Gacaca Tribunals-public hearings with citizen-judges-were initiated in 2001to rebuild the nation. As a result of the tribunals, confessed genocide killers were released from prison to live side-by-side with traumatized survivors.

Aghion holds a degree in Arabic language and literature from Columbia University's Barnard. She received a 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship.

The Ford Institute is an affiliate of Pitt's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for International Studies.

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9/14/09/tmw