Rwanda Film Festival

The Rwanda Film Festival also known as Hillywood in Rwanda. The film festival is reputed to take movies in the country side and show cinema to remote areas where there is less access to entertainment and education using the medium of Cinema.

The film Festival is organized yearly by the Rwanda Cinema Centre in collaboration with the Kwetu Film Institute, the leading film school in the country.

Hillywood, seeks to promote local and global awareness, appreciation and understanding of the nascent film industry in Rwanda and in East Africa.

Every year, the festival kicks off with an invites-only opening gala in Kigali, at which the full programme for the festival is officially announced.
Screenings are staged at select venues in Kigali and, as part of the festival’s Travelling Theater initiative, or ‘cinema in the Hills/ Hillywood to the people’, at various upcountry locations as well.

According to Eric Kabera, the festival founder, the upcountry screenings serve not only an artistic, but also a moral purpose, most of the people that turn up for the upcountry outdoor screenings are usually seeing a film by local filmmakers and actors for the first time.

In previous years, in line with various themes such as Heritage, the film festival has seen some of the film screenings be staged by the Lake Kivu in Rubavu, Karongi District, the Western Province as well as other places where the magnificent screen is always a spectacle not only for the kids but for the grown ups as well.

“One of the film Institute advisor Phil Alden Robinson who visited Rwanda when the delegation from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (The Oscars) visited Rwanda- Hillywood, Phil suggested to have our film festival moved by the lake, and now the Film festival team are planning to make this a tradition to take the movies there by the Kivu beach, the heritage of the Great Lakes region.
One of the most powerful weapons used to preserve and share a heritage, be it cultural or traditional, cinema is one of those tools.

“Cinema provides us with the power to understand, explore and build our own identities. Through cinema, we are able to see and understand what Africa was like in the independence struggle in the 60s, and what the world looked like after the two World Wars, what our ancestors did to survive when there was no car, airplanes or all the other commodities we have today. We cross through generations, to reshape and understand our past, build our present while we foresee our future.”
“New generations are built through what they inherit from their fore fathers. The stories we tell today, and how we tell them will shape the future of our children, their children, and many generations to come.”

The Rwanda film festival is here to present world class cinema experience with films from across the African continent and the African diaspora communities around the world. These are always complimented by an international selection of films that explore the heritage of different nations across the globe.
“Our rich and varied cultural heritage has a profound power to help build our nation. When Nelson Mandela said those words during a speech, he was referring to his nation of South Africa, but this is something that we can shape through the entire world.

“Learning to understand and embrace our differences by looking at our varied heritages and positive values are weapons that we can use to connect and bring all of us together.”
Eric Kabera