Isabelle Kabano, Rwanda on edge

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Actress Isabelle Kabano in 2021.

Sometimes all it takes is a detail, a gesture, to change the course of a career and even a life. “It happened in seconds while watching the casting rushes, remembers Gaël Faye, co-writer of the adaptation of his bestseller Little country At the movie theater. Seeing the movements Isabelle Kabano made with her hands, this way of shaking them and then turning them around, I immediately knew that it was she who was to play the role of Yvonne in the film. It was obvious. ”

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Without being autobiographical, Little country, who received the Goncourt high school student prize in 2016, is inspired by Gaël Faye’s childhood in the 1990s in Burundi. The young Gaby and the rapper, author of the album Wicked monday released in 2020, have the same origins, the same identity. They listened to the same music, smelled the same smells, met the same people.

Yvonne, Gaby’s mother, is a Rwandan married to a Frenchman played by Jean-Paul Rouve. She is one of the key characters in the film, so the resemblance to the actress must be perfectly faithful, including in the gestures of the hands. “These movements are typical of women living in Rwanda, Burundi and the region, assures Gaël Faye. At Cours Florent or elsewhere, you can’t learn that. At Isabelle Kabano, it’s innate. “

“My uncle’s name”

Born in 1974 into a Rwandan family in Bujumbura, capital of Burundi, Isabelle Kabano grew up in Kinshasa then in Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Her vacations, she always spent them on the shores of lakes Kivu or Tanganyika. “I was immersed in a universe of artists with a singer mother and a father who adored Ronsard and directed a theater company”, she says.

At that time, the Great Lakes region was already in the grip of strong tensions. From the 1960s, then in regular waves, abuses were committed against the Tutsi of Rwanda who took refuge in mass in Goma, on the other side of the Rwandan border. As a teenager, Isabelle Kabano participated in plays to finance the troops of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a politico-military movement from Uganda and composed mainly of Tutsi.

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In August 1993, the signing of the Arusha accords, between the RPF and the Rwandan government of President Habyarimana, raised some hopes for peace. Isabelle Kabano, who dreams of becoming “Actress or journalist”, settles in Rwanda where his grandparents live in particular. But hatred has already permeated society. “As a Tutsi, it was very difficult for me to enroll in school, she says. In 1993, I remember seeing a bus full of men with machetes. I will never forget their murderous looks. “

On October 21, 1993, Melchior Ndadaye, Hutu president elected in Burundi, was assassinated. The country falls into war and violence spread to Nyamirambo, the popular district of Kigali where Isabelle Kabano is installed: “I frequently heard calls for murder against the Tutsi. ” The violence continues to increase.

Her mother is worried and demands that the young woman return to Goma the following spring. A few days later, on April 7, 1994, the genocide of the Tutsi began. It will kill nearly a million people in three months. “At RTLM [la Radio Télévision des Mille Collines], I regularly heard the animators asking the Interahamwe militiamen to go and look for inhabitants that I knew in order to kill them, she remembers. One day they gave my uncle’s name on the air. “ He was found by the militiamen, his grandmother a little later. None survived.

episode 1 Ivory Coast: in Abidjan, on the trail of old cinemas

Like Yvonne in the film, Isabelle Kabano lost members of her family in this tragedy. Like Yvonne too, she returned to Rwanda in July 1994 after the RPF victory: “Everything was deserted and the smell of death hung in the air. ” It took time for the latter to dissipate and for the young woman to heal her wounds. A few years later, Isabelle Kabano took theater workshops at the University of Butare, in southern Rwanda. She also does radio, stage direction, works for the Olympic committee.

“I had an intense desire to work, to live, to enjoy every moment, she remembers. But there was also rage and pain in me. ” She plays her first roles in the cinema in Sometimes in april (2005), Operation Turquoise and I shook hands with the devil (2007), films related to the Tutsi genocide.

“I breathed like her”

It was in 2018, at the Ikezi bookstore in Kigali, that Isabelle Kabano came across Little country. “I took it directly from the box that had just arrived, she remembers. I must be the first person in Rwanda to have read it. “ She finishes it the following night, seeing places and atmospheres she knows, reliving the emotions and the pains.

Gaël Faye and Eric Barbier, director of the adaptation of Romain Gary’s work The promise of dawn (2017) with Pierre Niney and Charlotte Gainsbourg, offer him the first major role of his career. “In the tests, Isabelle disturbed me by her authenticity, says Gaël Faye. I had no doubts about his ability to play Yvonne, who is like an aggregate of several people. ”

The plot of Little country takes place in Burundi but, for security reasons, the shooting is being done in Rwanda at the beginning of 2019. The actress wants to perfectly embody Gaby’s mother, to step into the skin of this woman, futile and carefree at the beginning of the film, which slips into an abyss as the geopolitical situation deteriorates.

Episode 2 In northern Nigeria, the conservative Kannywood cinema

How to interpret his pain? Embody his madness? For hours, Isabelle Kabano will be absorbed in the contemplation of the dark waters of Lake Kivu to draw these emotions from her. Then, over the scenes, the script will push her to explore the range of dramaturgy. “Until I became Yvonne, explains the actress. I entered it until I couldn’t get out. “

“During the shooting, Isabelle was very distant, remembers Gaël Faye. She was so in her character that I had a hard time communicating with her. She was on edge. It was an experience bordering on trauma. “ Gaby’s dark mother, Isabelle Kabano falters.

The shooting ends after two months, but Yvonne is still present in her. “This woman haunted me, explains the actress. I spoke like her, I breathed like her… ” On the Internet, she discovers that actors like Bob Hoskins after Roger rabbit or Heath Ledger interprets the Joker in Batman sometimes remain locked in their role long after the ending clap. “By dedicating his copy of Little country, I ordered him to abandon the character of Yvonne because the two were mixing, remembers Gaël Faye. Isabelle was no longer herself. “

It is finally during an evening at home, with some close friends, that the actress will achieve it. By reading aloud passages from Little country, by recounting passages from her life marked by the genocide and finally explaining why Yvonne’s fate is so similar to hers. “I symbolically abandoned my role and became Isabelle again”, says the actress today, tilting her head and slightly moving her hands.

African cinemas

The World Africa and his correspondents went to meet African cinemas. Those of a lost golden age as in Ivory Coast or Algeria where, a few decades ago, we thronged in the dark rooms to discover the latest action films or rediscover the classics of national creation.

“Cinemas did not survive the switch from analog to digital” of the early 2000s, regrets Ivorian film critic Yacouba Sangaré. There as elsewhere, the seventh art had to take side roads to continue to reach its audience. Video clubs – from VHS tapes to DVDs – have nurtured a generation of moviegoers.

Some today are trying to revive mythical venues and their demanding programming, as in Morocco or Burkina Faso. Others see in the series a new mode of fertile creation. From fans of the Tangier film library to the conservative cinema of Kannywood, in northern Nigeria, they make African cinema today.

episode 1 Ivory Coast: in Abidjan, on the trail of the cinemas of yesteryear
Episode 2 In northern Nigeria, the conservative Kannywood cinema
Episode 3 Isabelle Kabano, Rwanda on edge