The film had already been spotted at Fespaco, the Pan-African film festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where it won the screenplay prize in 2021. Anonymous, directed by Rwandan Mutiganda Wa Nkunda, is screened at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival in western France. A film with universal reach, about a couple who are torn apart.
From our special correspondent from RFI in Angoulême,
They would have everything to be happy. In Kigali, Cathy and Philibert are young, beautiful, madly in love and they will soon have a child. But Cathy and Philibert have no money… This is what will push them towards the abyss. The director, Mutiganda Wa Nkunda, a former agriculture student, was inspired by a true story:
” In 2011, one morning, I turn on the radio and I hear that a man has killed his wife. This murderer, I knew him, he was a classmate from high school. Six years later, I’m watching a Ken Loach TV movie, Cathy come home (1966). I say to myself: it’s the same story. And I wanted to transpose this plot to Kigali, in contemporary times. »
Behind the scenes
The similarities are troubling indeed. In the British director’s TV movie, the heroine is also called Cathy and it is poverty that will lead her couple to the streets. In AnonymousPhilibert kills Cathy in an explosion of violence… for the equivalent of five euros, which she spent to buy powdered milk for their baby.
With Ken Loach as a reference, but without having studied cinema, Mutiganda Wa Nkunda shows behind the scenes of what many observers call the “ rwandan economic miracle “: strong growth, buildings that are springing up like mushrooms in a capital considered to be the safest in Africa.
” It is true that our country is developing well, admits the director. But behind this famous ”economic miracle”, there is collateral damage, people forgotten by the wayside. »
►Also listen: The youth and freedom of tone of Rwandan cinema in Angoulême
Double meaning
Mutiganda Wa Nkunda considers himself one of them. Registered as unemployed, insofar as he has no fixed job in the field in which he studied – agriculture – he underlines the double meaning of the title of his film: “Les Anonymesit means that this story could happen to anyone… But this word also designates all those who are nothing, who are not taken into consideration because they have no money »
Mutiganda Wa Nkunda shot his feature film without professional actors. Yves Kijyana (Philibert) and Colombe Mukeshimana (Cathy), friends of the director, lent themselves to the game with a confusing natural talent. The reality effect is even more striking.