A genocide survivor who has rebuilt her life around forgiveness finds her conviction tested to the limits when a family crisis forces her to confront her own buried past. Winner of the Caméra d'Or at Cannes, Ben'Imana is a moving debut about generational trauma and how hard it is to truly let go.
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This rich, deeply moving drama doesn’t shy away from forgiveness being something that cannot be easily forced. But not being honest about the memories we suppress deep inside can create an even heavier weight to bear
Ben’Imana 2026
“I forgive” are the first words uttered by Vénéranda in Ben’Imana, but her ferocious gaze and the clamp of her arms across her chest tell a different story.
Writer-director Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s drama is set in the Rwandan village Kibeho in 2012. It’s the final year of community tribunals focused on addressing the genocidal crimes committed in the previous decade.
The person Vénéranda officially forgives in the opening scene is Karangwa, the man accused of murdering her siblings and other relatives. Of the eight children their mother raised, only Vénéranda and her sister Suzanne survive. Suzanne’s fury is as explosive as her sister's is controlled. Contending to the judge that Vénéranda “has no right to forgive on behalf of our family,” she’s determined to bring Karangwa to justice.
What binds these two is the depth of what they’ve endured, the unspeakable brutality; what divides them is how they respond to it. Ben’Imana offers no simple definitions of courage, but rather a feverishly human portrait of its possible expressions.
At the center, Vénéranda’s resolve and all her painful contradictions are brought to life in this searing and intimate portrait of a nation’s reckoning."
– Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter