Hunting My Husband’s Killer: A Woman’s Journey into Betrayal, Forgiveness and Reconciliation 2005
Distributed by Filmakers Library, 124 East 40th Street, New York, NY 10016; 202-808-4980
Produced by Jay Knox
Directed by Ray Tostevin
VHS, color, 51 min.
Sr. High - Adult
African Studies, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Human Rights
Date Entered: 10/26/2007
Reviewed by Esmeralda Kale, Northwestern University Library, Evanston, ILOver 10 years after the Rwandan genocide, Lesley Bilinda returns to find out who killed her husband, Pastor Charles Bilinda. She was married to him for little over a year when he was abducted on the 21st April 1992 and never seen again. Recently there have been a number of confessions and Lesley hopes that she might be able to speak to someone who knows what happened.
Lesley, now living in Scotland, travels to the outskirts of Kigali to pay a visit to her sister-in-law, Apolonia, who has found out that Charles spent his final days as the guest of Pastor Kabeira. Paster Kabeira is in prison, accused of colluding with the Hutu death squads, and Lesley receives permission to interview him. Kabeira tells her that Charles was picked up in front of the guest house by men in a car and was never seen of again. Kabeira claims he did not know who these people were or what they wanted. Lesley interviews a man who is accused of being in charge of the death squads in Paster Kabeira’s old neighborhood. He will not admit to abducting or killing Charles
Lesley participates in the 2004 Genocide Remembrance March and then travels to the Murambi Genocide Site in order to try and understand the full scale what really happened during the genocide.
She returns to Gaheni village, north of Kigali, where she lived and worked for 5 years as a nurse. She walks us through the house she shared with Charles and discusses the challenges and strain in their relationship. She learns that her husband had been unfaithful to her. A woman who she had thought of as his colleague, had actually been more than a friend.
It is a moving story of deceit, betrayal, reconciliation and forgiveness on both a personal and national level. Lesley Bilinda started the Charles Bilinda Memorial Trust in 1994 as a way to help Rwandans recover from the genocide and to put something back into the country she loves.