In one long shot from Lee Isaac Chung’s Munyurangabo, we watch a family raise their picks and strike at the hard, dusty ground again and again. It may as well be a picture of what must happen to hardened hearts across Rwanda, which—as this intimate drama about two boys reveals—is still divided by hate-fueled grudges over all-too-recent genocide. As these boys, their histories divided by the war between Hutus and Tutsis, walk together through regions of damage and resentment, we begin to realize that one of them has vengeful intentions, and Rwanda’s future seems to hang in the balance.
—Jeffrey Overstreet