  A once-in-a-lifetime journey with Antarctica's 21st century explorers |
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anne aghiondirector & producer
Her new feature documentary MY NEIGHBOR MY KILLER caps nearly ten years of filming in post-genocide Rwanda, where a daring experiment in reconciliation and justice—the Gacaca Law (pronounced ga-CHA-cha)—has been put in place. There, over time, Aghion charted the emotional impact of a system of local open-air courts that adjudicates genocide crimes, and returns killers to their homes in exchange for confessions. MY NEIGHBOR MY KILLER is one of the rare documentaries to be accepted as an Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival. The only non-competition film in the festival’s history to have been honored with two screenings, it played to overflow audiences and powerful reviews. It has also been honored with invitations to screening across the globe, with a partial list including the Human Rights Watch International Film Festivals in London and New York, SILVERDOCS film festival in the Washington, D.C. area, the Hamptons International Film Festival, the Ojai International Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival, the second edition of the Galle International Film Festival in Sri Lanka, the inaugural DMZ Korean International Documentary Festival (DMZ Docs), the Festival des Libertés in Belgium and the Tri-Continental Film Festival in South Africa. Journalist Philip Gourevitch, author of “We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, Stories from Rwanda,” has said of Aghion’s work that it “captures quite precisely much of what is most compelling and unsettling about Rwanda’s quest for justice after genocide.” Two of her previous films on the subject, GACACA, LIVING TOGETHER AGAIN IN RWANDA? and IN RWANDA WE SAY... THE FAMILY THAT DOES NOT SPEAK DIES, are hour-long works which aired on the Sundance Channel and ARTE among other networks around the world. Both films have been used by peace-building organizations as a tool in understanding “heart and mind” issues in societies recovering from strife. They have also been screened in Rwanda—by NGOs as part of their training, and most remarkably, to tens of thousands of confessed genocide killers before their release from prison. (The two hour-long titles are the first installments in the Gacaca Trilogy. Its final chapter, THE NOTEBOOKS OF MEMORY, has also just been completed.) Earlier in 2009, Aghion released the feature documentary, ICE PEOPLE, which explores the physical, emotional and spiritual adventure of doing science in Antarctica, the earth’s most challenging environment. Described by Variety as “staggeringly beautiful,” ICE PEOPLE conveys the vast beauty, the claustrophobia, the excitement, and the stillness of an experience set to nature’s rhythm. When it opened in New York, the film was a critic’s pick in Time Out New York and New York Magazine, which called ICE PEOPLE “immersive, mesmerizing,” The New York Times wrote that it was “instantly compelling. ICE PEOPLE sticks in the mind.” Aghion’s first film, “Se Le Movio el Pisò” (“The Earth Moved Under Him—A Portrait of Managua”) was the winner of the Havana Film Festival’s 1996 Coral Award for Best Non-Latin American Documentary on Latin America. That film explored how slum dwellers in Nicaragua’s capital had survived a series of natural and political disasters. For most of her life, Aghion has been a dual resident of New York and Paris. She spent the first eight years of her career in both editorial and administrative capacities at The New York Times Paris bureau, and at the International Herald Tribune. Moving into film, she worked in a variety of capacities including videographer, production and post-production manager with filmmakers such as Richard Leacock & Valérie Lalonde, and Judith Abitbol, and for documentaries aired on major cable networks such as Canal+ and ARTE. Aghion was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005, and has received repeat grants from the Soros Documentary Fund, the Sundance Documentary Fund, and the United States Institute of Peace. She also received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Compton Foundation, and the Peter S. Reed Foundation. In addition, she was able to generate funding for the Gacaca Trilogy from the Austrian Development Agency, the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swiss Development Cooperation, and Oxfam Novib thanks to the significant impact of GACACA. Anne Aghion holds a Bachelor of Arts Magna Cum Laude in Arab Language and Literature from Barnard College at Columbia University in New York, and following her studies, spent two years living in Cairo. |
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Laurent Petitgand Benoit Gryspeerdt
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© 2008 Anne Aghion & Dry Valleys Productions. All Rights Reserved. No reproductions without written consent. Site by Frazier Design Co. |
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As a filmmaker, Anne Aghion has been drawn to places as far-ranging as rural Rwanda, the ice fields of Antarctica and the slums of Managua. She has been praised by critics, both as a director of unique and poetic vision, and a documentarian who conveys a strong sense of the people and places she covers. Her work has also earned her, among other honors, a UNESCO Fellini Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, an Emmy, and the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival’s Nestor Almendros Award for courage in Filmmaking.
Nadia Ben Rachid
Sylvestre Guidi 
Richard Fleming