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 Hutu extremists in Rwanda in 1994. 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.

BIO

Amelia Umuhire, born 1991 in Kigali, Rwanda is a filmmaker and artist living in Berlin. In 2015 she wrote and directed her first web-series, Polyglot, in which she follows  the lives of young, deracinated London- and Berlin-based Rwandese artists. The series was shown at numerous festivals, including the Festival D'Angers, the Tribeca Film Festival and the Geneva International Film Festival, where it was named Best International Web Series in 2015. Her short film 'Mugabo' is an experimental short film set in Kigali. It explores the question of how to return to one's homeland and how to deal with the past. In 2017 it was awarded Best Experimental Film at the Blackstar Film Festival and screened at MOCA Los Angeles, the Smithsonian African American Film Festival and many more. In 2018 Amelia Umuhire produced the Prix Europa nominated radio feature Vaterland for the German radio station Deutschlandfunk Kultur. She was a Villa Romana Fellow in 2020 and adapted the feature into the French "Innocent". She is currently working on her first feature film and writing for German TV. 

https://www.instagram.com/amelia.umuhire/