Alrick Brown: From Plainfield to Sundance

I first met Alrick Brown at Essex County College in Newark, NJ, where I went to see a screening of his award winning, satirical short film, The Adventures of SuperNigger. It was around the time I was finishing my first short film, and Alrick and I spoke for what seemed like hours, where he gave me insight about what to expect in the indie film world that till this day I have never forgotten.

About the worldwide film festival circuit, he commented, "I keep seeing the same faces, bro." Whether a comment on the community's acceptance of minority filmmakers into film competitions, or simply an assessment of just how few filmmakers of color are working outside of traditional themes and genres, those words, in my personal experience, still strike a chord with me.

Alrick's film Kinyarwanda will premiere in Park City as an entry in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. Here is IndieWire's in depth interview with Mr. Brown below:



"Fresh, insightful, and profoundly moving, 'Kinyarwanda,' the first dramatic feature film conceived and produced by Rwandans, is an extraordinary telling of the 1994 genocide that expands the common victim/perpetrator narrative to illuminate the complex fabric of life during the tragic event, and the even more complicated process of redemption in the truth and reconciliation process.

Director/writer Alrick Brown and cowriter/producer Ishmael Ntihabose elegantly interweave six stories based on true accounts—a Tutsi/Hutu couple, a small child, a soldier, a pair of teenage lovebirds, a priest, and an Imam—as they are affected by the Muslim leadership of the time. Little is known about how the Mufti of Rwanda—the most respected Muslim leader in the country—forbade Muslims from participating in the killing of the Tutsi. As the country became a slaughterhouse, mosques became places of refuge where Muslims and Christians, Hutus and Tutsis came together to protect each other."



Read the full interview HERE.

- Princeton