2009 PUBLIC AFFAIRS CONFERENCE

Icyizere: Hope

College of Arts and Letters

Icyizere: Hope is a documentary filmed, edited and produced by Missouri State graduate Patrick Mureithi about the ongoing reconciliation process between survivors and perpetrators of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, in which 1 million people died over a span of 100 days.

Mureithi traveled to a reconciliation workshop between Hutu and Tutsi tribe members in Gisenyi, Rwanda, and he was deeply moved by what he observed there. “This changed my life, because it made me look at my own grudges, and how holding on to them has kept me from being fully happy, fully human,” Mureithi said. “The need to forgive and to be forgiven is a human one. And observing survivors and perpetrators — of what has been termed the most brutal and most effective genocide known to man — come to an understanding of each other gave me, and all at the workshop, a sense of hope.”

Icyizere: Hope has been submitted for consideration in the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and will be premiered as part of the College of Arts and Letters Lecture Series at 7:00 p.m., April 20 in the PSU Theater.

When: Monday, April 20, 2009 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

Room: PSU Theater