In this deeply moving musical reading, Dorcy Rugamba recounts the life of his family—wiped out in the Rwandan genocide on the morning of April 7, 1994.
More than 30 years have passed since the genocide in Rwanda, yet Rugamba’s Hewa Rwanda stands as one of the most powerful and authentic testaments to what happened. “How can one grasp the full dimension of an event that took more than a million lives, where the death of my brother […] becomes almost anecdotal—just one case among a million, a fraction whose mathematical value is nearly zero?” he writes. (Dorcy Rugamba). Hewa Rwanda s an intense meditation on family, culture, and spirituality—a lyrical act of remembrance and a counterforce to the “impulses of death” that mark our age.
Dorcy Rugamba is a writer, actor, dancer, and director based in Brussels and Kigali. In 2012, he founded the Rwanda Arts Initiative in Kigali, a cultural hub aimed at connecting Rwandan artists and professionalising the local arts scene. In 2019, he wrote and directed the opera Umurinzi for the official commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the genocide. In February 2024, together with his team at the Rwanda Arts Initiative, he launched the first edition of the Kigali Triennale. A month later, in March 2024, he published HEWA RWANDA: Lettre aux absents (Letter to the Absent)—a profoundly personal narrative that gives voice to his family’s memory.
DIRECTOR, PERFORMANCE Dorcy Rugamba | LIVE MUSIC Majnun | PRODUCTION Sophie Kabano / Rwanda Arts Initiative | DIFFUSION Marie-Laure Warziczny (La Charge Du Rhinocéros) | GERMAN TRANSLATION/TITLING YvonneGriesel | ENGLISH TRANSLATION Kate McNaughton