Rwanda Cinema Centre welcomes you to the 2022 Rwanda Film Festival

The Rwanda film festival commonly known as “Hillywood” is back again, a great selection of movies from all over Africa, an amazing program of workshop and forum and Hillywood extravaganza- a country tour that takes true cinema experience to the communities. It’s happening starting from 16th to 30th July 2022 ; the Rwanda Film Festival will take place in the four corners of the country as well as in various venues in the city of Kigali. This year’s festival is working under the theme “Africa Celebrated at Hillywood” The Rwanda Cinema Centre and the team behind the festival warmly welcomes you to this unique annual event.

The 7th Annual Rwanda Film Festival represents a turning point for Rwanda’s growing film industry. Rwanda has embraced the efforts put forth by the Rwanda Cinema Centre, where the idea to start the festival with little to no financial assistance was born. Eric Kabera and his young team had always harbored a big dream to build a film industry in “the country of a thousand hills”, to empower youth in the art of filmmaking and to tell the world their stories. The team of dedicated volunteers managed to bring films not only to residents and VIP audiences in Kigali, but also to over 35,000 people throughout the countryside – For one week each year, the festival travel to rural villages and project local films on a giant inflatable screen delighting audiences, many of whom have never seen a movie, let alone one made in Rwanda, about Rwanda, and by Rwandans– meanwhile drawing the attention of such luminaries as the los Angeles based Academy of Motion Picture.

There is great anticipation for the festival’s 7th year, and in an effort to expand this vision, RCC is partnering with the Ministry of Culture, RDB (development, tourism and investments agency) and many other partners (corporate and NGOs) to produce a higher profile festival. The 2022 program is being designed to continue to feature Rwandan and African filmmakers, engaging events, training workshops and panel discussions as well as other forums to build the film industry and further empower the citizens of Rwanda and the East African Community.

It is critical for the Rwanda Film Festival to remain authentic and independent in spirit, at the same time showing the world that indeed Rwanda is a serious contender to be considered as an important voice in the world’s film community. The Rwanda Film Festival takes place for 2 weeks. The first week involves film screenings in the hills of Rwanda commonly known as hillywood as it takes place quite literally throughout the hills of Rwanda. The acclaimed film “Africa United” will be among the biggest attraction in the program. The second week involves film screenings in the city of Kigali, with international audiences and great films out of Africa.

The Hillywood screenings are designed to bring Rwandan and East African films to the outer provinces. Typically, this week-long tour attracts 30,000 – 40,000 attendees, who are treated to the outdoor screenings (utilizing the inflatable screens) at no cost. Plans are underway to extend the event to the all East African community member states.

To grace the Rwanda Film Festival is the soft opening of the KWETU Film Institute on 18th July, 2022 by a delegation from Academy of Motion Picture.

The KWETU Film Institute (KFI) is intended to be a center of academic excellence for exploring new kinds of communication, cultural expression, and regional civic engagement. Through cinematic education and training, including programs in film, television and mobile, as well as supporting programs in the performing arts, KFI will provide East Africa with a holistic, sustainable and internationally recognized media training facility.

Starting in 2022 and for the next five years, KFI expects to enroll approximately two thousand students who will be exposed to all the important aspects of cinematic media creation. With practitioner instructors, experts in various fields of media, KFI will offer professional, hands on media training programs founded upon on solid academic criterion.

The two key overarching goals of KFI are firstly to focus on developing the media literacy skills of individual participants and secondly to contribute to the cultural and economic cohesiveness of the East African Community of the five nations of Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda and Rwanda.

Goal number one is to prepare individual participants to compete and succeed in the 21st century global economy. In today’s globalized, digitalized world, media is a key driver. KFI students will develop the core competencies to become media literate – to not only understand the effects and power of media, but to also develop the skill-sets to create and use cinematic media in all its forms. Trained as storytellers at KFI, KFI graduates, using visual media as their tools, will have the opportunity to contribute real world value to virtually every field in the global economy.

The second goal of KFI is to have a program designed for students to actively participate in trans-media filmmaking by sharing in the production and of content across the media spectrum, which reflects the multi-cultural landscape of East Africa. The KFI learning space will be one where individuals can pool knowledge and work together in active participation, on-the-ground and on-line, in on-going transnational conversations across diverse cultures.

Visit; www.kwetufilminstitute.com