Iseta – Behind the Roadblock

The genocide in Rwanda, which took place from 6 April to 4 July1994, was one of the cruellest events of the twentieth century. The conflict took between 800 thousand and 1 million lives, which gave the Rwandan massacre the highest death rate per day of all genocides. The provocation was the assassination of Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana. People fired at his airplane in Kigali and it crashed without leaving any survivors. That night, the genocide in Rwanda began, organised by the Hutu government and directed against the Front Patriotique Rwandais and the Tutsi population, whom they held responsible for the murder of the president. On a quiet road in Kigali, some of the first victims fell. Coincidentally, a British cameraman was present at the time, who captured the slaughter from a tall building, the French school in Kigali. In Iseta: The Roadblock, he returns to Kigali and talks to people who were involved. The film wants to lend these people a face. He shows the footage, according to the film the only images shot of the massacre, to the survivors, who try to identify the perpetrators. Iseta: The Roadblock is an attempt to tell the human story behind the cold figures of the genocide in Rwanda. (IDFA)