Back in 2015, around the time his second feature film came out, Kivu Ruhorahoza carried around a very self-conscious director’s statement consisting of ten points. One of them read in part, “Am I afraid of winning the Most Pretentious Film Award?”
Well, if anyone was going to receive that award, it might very well have been the Rwandan filmmaker, whose Things of the Aimless Wanderer was about as impenetrable as its title. Luckily for the many people who thought his willfully obscure film obscured a remarkable talent, that aspect of his work has been tempered over the years—as can be seen in his new film, Father’s Day, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival.
It’s not like he has abandoned all his quirks. The new film, like his sophomore feature, is again a collection of three tales which intersect narratively and — surprise — thematically. The title hints at the writer-director’s intentions, which in his trademark style are hardly straightforward. Yes, all three stories have fathers in them, but none exactly calls for their celebration. One father is chronically ill, one is bereaved, one is a thief. These are fathers chiefly in a biological sense, although the bereaved dad’s status could be questioned.
The film opens with kids. One throws pebbles into a muddy stream, a few others skate. In the next scene, the pebble-throwing kid loosens the bolts from a truck’s tyre and heads into the arms of a man we later learn is his hustler father. That same evening, the truck loses a tyre on the road. The tyre collides with a kid skating uphill. The kid dies. There is no suspense here: the identity of the truck driver proves irrelevant to the narrative. He may not even be aware of the death. Ruhorahoza hasn’t made a thriller. His intentions are more lofty. He has made a drama presenting the crisis of masculinity and patriarchy in his homeland. What does it take to be a father in today’s Rwanda?
The answer, it seems, may be universal, given the recent uptick in attention given to masculinity and its presentation in society. Some say it’s important; others say it may not only be overrated but needless. Ruhorahoza’s film proves its importance by stating (or maybe overstating) its overrated position. His theme may be tied to universal questions but it’s also specific to Rwanda since, lurking behind the depiction of dwindling patriarchal power, there is the country’s original sin of 1994. The director isn’t parsing the events that led to the genocide in, say, the manner of Atiq Rahimi’s 2019 adaptation of Scholastique Mukasonga’s novel Our Lady of the Nile. Instead, he takes a look at the aftermath of an event caused and carried out by men, many of whom lost their lives, livelihoods, or self-respect. What use is the patriarchy if it leads to a genocide? And although most of the references to that event are oblique, one of the fathers in Father’s Day may be directly connected to it. Ruhorahoza skillfully cuts between that character’s karmic comeuppance and his offspring’s liberation, in a scene in which the director’s visual inventiveness conveys something of the subtext.
In a different set-up, the married masseuse Zaninka is subtly chastised by her husband for the supposedly sexual aspect of her line of work. This is preceded by a client asking her for a happy ending to his massage. He is willing to pay the equivalent of two school fees for it. The unfeeling neediness of both men is spotlighted, but so is something that is never mentioned: Zaninka no longer has a child to pay fees for.
Ruhorahoza’s film is clearly low budget, but as an auteur he has always demonstrated a resourcefulness that gets his ideas onscreen, though not always in the most aesthetically pleasing of ways. As lensed by Taté, the film holds its ideas aloft but is down to earth in terms of production value. It looks ready for TV, a choice accentuated by the 4:3 aspect ratio, which in itself appears to be an artistic choice, given the inescapable box encasing the lives on display. This is a film that should make the festival rounds, buoyed by the director’s profile and his impressive handling of the three stories. It could even find some art house play in Europe, though its humble production values will limit its potential to reach a wide audience.
Director, screenplay, editing: Kivu Ruhorahoza
Cast: Mediatrice Kayitesi, Aline Amike, Yves Kijyana, Cedric Ishimwe, André Musagara, Elie Bigirimana
Production company: Iyugi Productions
Producers: Kivu Ruhorahoza, Dida Nibagwire
Executive Producer: Gaël Faye
Cinematography: Taté
Music: Michael Makembe
Production design: Ricardo Sankara
Venue: Berlin International Film Festival (Encounters)
In Kinyarwanda
111 minutes
