Innocent
by Amelia Umuhire
editing: Anais Cabande
mastering: Giulio Aldinucci
voices: Amelia Umuhire, Samuel Ishimwe
Amelia Umuhire tells the story of Innocent Seminega – her father – as a young student, teacher, husband and parent up until his death at the hands of the Hutu extremists in Rwanda. Tracing her family history as she addresses him, she weaves together threads from his love of linguistics, his romance with her mother, parenthood, and life lived amidst violent conflict – until unfurling her own story of her childhood and movement between countries – critiquing the white gaze which might try and frame her family’s story.
Innocent is an intimate portrait that resists the narrative canon that the West imposes on recent Rwandan history.
Innocent is co-produced by Radio Papesse and Pratiques d'Hospitalité (ESAD Grenoble) in the frame of the Hospitalité artistique et activisme visuel pour une Europe diasporique et post-occidentale research unit. Recorded at Villa Romana, summer 2020.
It follows Fatherland a radio documentary commissioned by Deutschlandfunk Kultur in 2018.
