An unusual African film with a powerful visual narrative style and an experimental electronic score. The Aimless Wanderer of the title is a white man making an African travelogue. He meets a local girl who soon disappears. Little by little, fear and paranoia overcome him.

a film by Kivu Ruhorahoza

2014, Rwanda/United Kingdom, Feature, 1hr07, Drama

Starring: Justin Mullikin, Grace Nikuze, Ramadhan Bizimana, Eliane Umuhire, Wesley Ruzibiza, Matt Ray Brown

Second feature

YEAR: 2014
Genre: Drama
COUNTRY: Rwanda/United Kingdom
RUN TIME: 77 min
Film format : DCP

NOTE OF THE PROGRAMMER
An unusual African film with a powerful visual narrative style and an experimental electronic score. The Aimless Wanderer of the title is a white man making an African travelogue. He meets a local girl who soon disappears. Little by little, fear and paranoia overcome him.

The latest film by Kivu Ruhorahoza is exceptional for several reasons, and not just because it is an African production. For example, instead of approaching all the funds and charities he could to complete the financing, he decided to start shooting straight away with limited support from an adventurous English producer. In terms of content, Things of the Aimless Wanderer challenges more than one politically correct opinion - and this is probably no coincidence. The film's style also surprises, as one of the few African films showing such artistic originality that the word ‘experimental' applies. Here too, the young Rwandan director goes his own way.
The protagonist of Things of the Aimless Wanderer is a white man who meets a local girl on his travels through Africa. The girl disappears and the man decides to investigate. In the meantime, he completes a travel journal. The story seems to be retold in several variants; the relationship between the man and the girl is always highly uncomfortable, however.

NOTE OF THE PROGRAMMER
Kivu Ruhorahoza's arresting feature reveals a series of cryptic and loosely connected narrative shards. Each depicts an uneasy encounter between an African woman and a male figure of authority or menace, be he a nineteenth century white explorer, a twenty-first century Western journalist, or a Rwandan man performing reconnaissance for a shadowy internal agency. In each story, a female figure is an object of lust, surveillance, fascination, or violence, inevitably disappearing from the narrative. Every disappearance becomes a sort of chorus, punctuated by enigmatic images and haunting musical soundscapes. Considering the film's title ("aimless wanderer" originally described hapless European explorers), one might indeed ask whether the female avatar of these stories may be a metaphor for Rwanda itself: colonized, objectified, and struggling to calibrate cultural gains, including gains for women, with reactionary policies and sentiments. Such questions haunt the periphery of this provocative film whose narrative core remains a reservoir of mystery. -S.K. (Sundance Film Festival 2015)
www.sundance.org/projects/things-of-the-aimless-wanderer

Director
Kivu Ruhorahoza

Screenwriter
Kivu Ruhorahoza

Producer
Kivu Ruhorahoza
Antonio Rui Ribeiro

Cinematographer
Kivu Ruhorahoza

Editor
Antonio Rui Ribeiro

Sound design
Jan Meinema

Production design
Cher-Wen DeWitt

Color Grading
Joseph Bicknell

Music
Daniel Biro

Sound
Jan Meinema
Eugene Safali

Rôles Principaux / Main Cast
Justin Mullikin
Grace Nikuze
Ramadhan Bizimana
Eliane Umuhire
Wesley Ruzibiza
Matt Ray Brown

production / sales
Moon Road Films
www.moonroadfilms.com/

2015 | Sundance, Salt Lake City, USA
* Selection - SECTION New Frontier Films
* Projection / Screening: 6:00 PM - MON 1/26 - Temple Theatre
* Projection / Screening: 3:00 PM - TUE 1/27 - Broadway Centre Cinema 6
* Projection / Screening: 10:00 PM - WED 1/28 - Redstone Cinema 2
* Projection / Screening: 9:00 PM - SAT 1/31 - Yarrow Hotel Theatre
* www.sundance.org/projects/things-of-the-aimless-wanderer