Television review In the claustrophobic film Trees of Peace, four women hide in the basement during a genocide

Culture|Television review

Drama

Trees of Peace ★★★

USA 2021

Netflix (K16)

Movie Trees of Peace is located almost entirely in an area of ​​only a couple of square meters. It’s a basement where four women are hiding.

The background to the drama of the cramped space is the genocide in Rwanda. During the outbreak of violence, which began in April 1994 and lasted for a hundred days, more than a million people were killed, according to the film’s original texts, and even more conservative estimates put the death toll at more than 800,000.

Some people survived the genocide by hiding. Trees of Peace loosely base on those stories.

Narrator Annick (Eliane Umuhire) is a pregnant hutu and the basement is located below her kitchen. Peyton, a white U.S. volunteer (Ella Cannon), Nun Jeanette (Charmaine Bingwa) and lastly the Tutsi Mutesi (Bola Koleosho).

On Netflix The drama, which recently premiered on TV, is an American screenwriter-director Alanna Brownin first-born. In interviews, he has talked about how the story of the film can be compared to both the Holocaust and recent U.S. history.

Indeed, the film depicts the dignity of one group of people, which is also familiar from the political speech here. Sounds outside the basement refer to Tutsis as cockroaches.

Even the protagonists of the drama doubt each other’s legitimacy for protection: the American is guaranteed to be benevolent, the Hutu has certainly not experienced any difficulties, God certainly does not forgive another’s sins. The most beautiful is Mutesi, whose reasons for bitterness unfold as the film progresses. Everyone has brought their trauma, beliefs and prejudices to a small space.

The feeling of cramping is effectively enhanced by the fact that the basement door is locked from the outside. Even a small street-level window does not show glimpses of freedom but of violence.

Characters the speeches refer to a possible asylum, the Hôtel des Mille Collines. The owner of the same hotel, who tried to protect refugees and his family, was the subject of an acclaimed drama in 2004 Hotel in Rwanda.

Trees of Peace is a more modest film, although the script also tackles big themes from the ghosts of colonialism to religious views. The drama also contains several references to severe violence, but in the basement the frictions become fat and empathy grows.

In spite of the darkness, there is a strong hope for the whole. At the same time, the characters are in danger of remaining representatives of their groups and the story of mediating tensions between these groups.

At its best, the film is approaching claustrophobic horror. An incomprehensible evil awaits you outside.