How Can You Forgive a Killer?

Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Rwanda

by Laura Waters Hinson

Gabe Lyons: Welcome to another edition of the Q Podcast. Today, we're joined by Laura Waters Hinson who is not only a film maker but founded something called Image Bearer Pictures. She is on the front edge of making films that are telling some of the most amazing stories that I've heard. It's just really cool to have you with us. I'm looking forward to get into a conversation about what's driving the kind of stories you're trying to tell and helping us get a little more educated on just the film space and how you're seeing stories play out on that space. Thanks for being with us today.

Laura Waters Hinson: Thanks for having me on, Gabe.

Gabe: Yeah. I think the thing that fascinated me first, Laura, about your project which over the last two years I've had multiple people email me about, talked to me about, and we finally got the privilege of meeting this past fall and finally seeing the film, is just how in-depth this project was for you. Would you tell us about the project called "As We Forgive" and give us just a sense of the story right off the bat that you were trying to tell and then we'll start digging deeper into what motivated that for you and what are some of the fruit that we're seeing come out of it.

Laura: Sure. "As We Forgive" is a documentary that tells a story of Rwandans who are on the journey through reconcile with the people who killed their families during the 1994 genocide. It focuses on two women who are survivors of the genocide as they come face to face with the man who killed some of their closest family members, their sister, their father, et cetera.

How does someone forgive somebody who's done something so unfathomable to them. The question I really was looking at is it is even possible to forgive, and if so, what does that mean? What does Rwanda's story mean for the rest of us?

Gabe: What's fascinating to me when I watched this, Laura, was that I've seen a lot of different films, documentaries, stories out of Rwanda. I mean, it's a place I know we care about. We've been doing the Rwanda Clean Water Project there for over four years now and we've been there and seen these stories and I've seen, at a glimpse, a little bit of what you're talking about.

There have been documentaries and nightly news and those kinds of places have talked about some of this forgiveness and reconciliation that's happening. But nobody's gone in-depth and really gotten into the heart of these stories and that's what you did so well. You were literally sitting there in the homes of these women, hearing the emotions, seeing the tears, talking to the murderers themselves.

It was just so compelling to sit there and see the real interpersonal angst that goes through the life of somebody that's just unimaginable to have to consider reconciliation with somebody that might have killed your husband or your father.

What did this do to you personally going through this experience?

Laura: Wow, I think it's had a pretty profound set on the way I view everything. A day doesn't go by when something annoying or hard or sad happens to me that I don't say, "Wow, it's nothing like Rwanda." [laughs] Really, meeting these people who have really been in utter depths of despair, going through something that I really cannot imagine recovering from, it totally has put everything in my life into perspective. I think that it's given me a lot more faith and a lot more hope than I had going into it.

Honestly, when I went first to Rwanda to start filming, I just didn't know if these stories were true or not and I didn't know personally if I could say, "Yeah, I would forgive somebody who killed my family." I really didn't know if it was possible. I think after processing it now for several years, I've been working with this project for years, I can say that it appears that God does come down in these people's lives and give them immense grace to deal with something that none of us have ever experienced.

And so, it just widened my perspective on who God is. It's given me a lot of hope that we can get through really hard circumstances no matter what they are.

I think in that I've been given a lot of peace. I've been really humbled by it. We think in the West we know all about God and I went to Rwanda and learned a lot more about God than I've ever learned before.

Gabe: Yeah. I think the story, as you were there I know you realized what an important role the church actually was playing in this process that was playing out in an unprecedented way in this community. Talk about the effect you've seen of just people responding or seeing the story, again, who may not be Christians or in any way would connect themselves to religion or to the church. What kind of effect do you see on people who are exposed to this kind of a story of just radical reconciliation?

Maybe they've never either experienced it in their life or they're not that used to that kind of discussion. What are some of the topics or questions that come out of that or just raw responses that you've seen?
Laura: I've been really, really -- probably one of my greatest outcomes of this is the experience of having the film embraced by both a Christian audience for obvious reasons, but also by the human rights audiences and just the secular mainstream audiences because it is such a radical topic that people don't quite know what to do with. And so, I've seen time again it bring together people who are believers and people who are nonbelievers in a real discussion about what are the limits of justice on this earth and what is the hope of mercy in radical reconciliation.

In terms of screenings, I've had tons of people come up after the film. Sometimes, I feel like I get into a confessional with people because they'll just begin telling me about these things that happened in their lives, these awful, horrible things that have been done to them.

And they say, "Oh, my dad cheated on my mom" or "My brother harmed my father and almost killed him," et cetera "And yet I've been living with this burden and now I'm seeing that if the Rwandans can forgive, maybe I can, too. Maybe there's hope for me.

So I feel like people from all backgrounds have really engaged it that way and had similar responses. It's been really, really exciting. I had no idea how people would respond but they seemed to really embrace it and want to talk about it.

We often have really long discussions after the film is shown in a public setting and the discussions will go on for 30 or 45 minutes because people debate this, is it really possible?

Gabe: Yeah. What an intense conversation that can be. Considering forgiveness for somebody who's killed close to you, I can't imagine. I alluded to it earlier about the church, could you explain from your experiences in Rwanda how you saw the church play a restorative role in this process and maybe what uniqueness or unique perspective they were able to bring into this process for people?

Laura: Sure. It's very interesting in Rwanda because what you have is the government there has released at least 60,000 genocide perpetrators from prison. They released the guys who confessed to the crime and said, "We're sorry. What we did was wrong." Because there really was no way all these people were going to get a trial or go through and have an official federal court process. The government made this really bold decision to release these prisoners and ask the people of Rwanda to reconcile and to reintegrate the killers into their communities.

And so it's one thing for your government to ask you as a citizen to reconcile, but it's a very different thing to actually do that in your heart.

I think the government there has understood that it's really going to be the church's role and the faith-based organizations and the different groups operating in Rwanda who were going to actually give people the tools and the mediation and the counseling and the healing workshops, et cetera, that are going to truly bring about the reconciliation that's needed.

And so, I think the church has played a major role and is playing a major role in literally just bringing people back together again, just being a place where a killer and a survivor can meet on common ground.

Most of these people were Christians before. 85, 90 percent of Rwanda claims to be Christians, so you can't imagine how a Christian nation could devolve into genocide.

But it's really the church who's coming alongside people and teaching them about who God is and what Jesus did. And when people are accepting this idea that they have been forgiven by God, it makes it so much more real for them to be able to extend that forgiveness to the killers.

The killers, once they understand that they've been forgiven themselves, they have a huge responsibility to go out and ask their neighbors for forgiveness.

And so, I think the church is doing a good job. They're learning a lot more this idea of encouraging repentance first and then encouraging reconciliation and forgiveness second. The repentance is the number one thing. The killers have got to repent.

And so I've seen a number of different places in Rwanda the church trying to help people get to that point so that they could bring about more often reconciliation, as opposed to just paying lip service to reconciliation like most people would do.

Gabe: Well, have you seen the Christian story play a really critical role and people even embracing this idea of being open to it. I mean, where there people of maybe other faiths that were also going through this reconciliation process and you saw it playing out just as effectively for them as somebody who would consider themselves a Christian?

Laura: Well, I haven't seen it play out in any other faith context. It doesn't mean it's not happening, but given the fact that just Rwanda is so prominently a Christian nation. There is a growing number of Muslims now in Rwanda and a lot of them has actually come after the genocide from what I understand because many people did leave the faith after the genocide, and so some have embraced Islam.

I do think that there's an Islamic group who are working towards reconciliation, but I haven't studied them and I haven't heard about them. They're definitely like the prominent organizers of reconciliation of the country.

Gabe: This idea of reconciliation obviously is rooted in the Gospel. I mean, it's just at the heart of what Christ did for us and therefore we should do for others. For you, I know it just plays a significant role now in your life after this experience as you mentioned and you can't really get away from it.

I know as you continue to do more and more film projects that this is starting to play a central piece in some of those. Could you just tell us a little more about maybe some of the projects you're working on and how a theme of reconciliation is playing itself out for you?

Laura: Sure. I do think that the concept to reconciliation is at the heart of the Gospel and it is at the heart of so many great stories in the world. Some of the best stories, the best films at the climax of that film is a story of healing or redemption of some sort. And so, I think that theme of reconciliation, personally, I would love to see it play out in all of the films that I do in some way, maybe not directly another film about forgiveness, but in some way to have brokenness and healing and seeing all broken things becoming new things. I want that to be a theme throughout my work.

I have a couple of films that I'm involved in right now; one is called "The Redemption of General Butt Naked," [laughs] which I'm not directing. Some good friends of mine who are directing this film and I'm coming in as a support producer to work with them and help them out with it.

That's just all about a Liberian warlord who killed about 10,000 people, he and his men, and they were notorious for killing people while naked with only their boots and their AK-47s during Liberia's civil war.
He actually about 10 years ago, this General Butt Naked, his real name is Joshua, had a pretty radical conversion experience and today is an itinerant preacher in West Africa. He's a very controversial character, as you might imagine.

Some people think he's redeemed and an amazing person who's helping his community. Other people think he is just using religion to get out of punishment for his crimes. It's a fascinating film. I'd love for people to check it out at generalbuttnakedmovie.com.

In addition to that, there's another film that I'm co-directing with my friend, KC Kerby about hot dog vending in Washington D.C. It's actually a really fascinating underworld in D.C., this world of hot dog vending where you have this clash or this medley of people from different countries, immigrants, people from all backgrounds who are here to make their own version of the American dream.

It's fraught with controversy, this whole issue. There's a lot of pending legislation coming up in D.C. regarding vending. So, we have a story of one guy named Coit Manuel who's trying to break into this underworld of vending and bring new light and new life into this world, this whole industry.

And so, we're just in the middle of shooting that right now. It's a long-term project, but I think at the heart of it it will have a redemptive strain through it about people who are working hard in the worst economy we've seen since the depression to make their dreams come true.

Gabe: Take us deep into your studio, OK? You're doing all-nighters occasionally to get a story told. For those listening who aren't filmmakers and don't really understand the art or understand even the motivation, could you give us kind of that inside feel for what drives you to work so hard to tell a story that honestly for so many filmmakers it's seen by very few people? Even today where digitally we can get film out and more people can access it for free or download it and watch it online, still the numbers aren't as staggering as they could be for other filmmakers who instantly have platform. What drives you to take the time to tell a great story?

Laura: I do think often that independent filmmakers. All of us, are gluttons for punishment on some level. We get an idea in our head and it won't leave and so we do work 15, 16 hours a day for weeks or months or years just to tell a great story. I firmly believe that film and storytelling is at the heart of our culture and has the power through it to transform the way that people think about who they are, about the world, about their fellowmen. I think that they learn a lot about ourselves as human beings by watching our stories portrayed in television and in film.

I think that myself, I'm not unique in this. I think all the filmmakers that I know, they're moved by the power of that medium. And increasingly, our culture is turning so much more such a media frenzied culture and there's such a competition now for who is really going to capture the imagination of our populace.

It really is a battle and I think, for me, it's a challenge to think of what are the stories that are out there that are profound and may be life-changing for people.

But ones that also have some sort of entertainment value or somebody might want to sit down on a Friday night and consume or watch that film or piece of media that you've created.
That's the big challenge right now and I'm learning about it just as everybody else. We're all trying to figure out how we get these kinds of independent films distributed and get it to the right audience because there are audiences out there but I think that story...

I just think it's so profoundly important in that there are so few good stories being told today. So I'm hoping to try to tell more and more as my career goes on.

Gabe: So, tell us about "As We Forgive." I mean, you took this film, I know, on a nationwide tour where a ton of churches would screen this. I know our church in Atlanta did this. You've also now for this spring have a really interesting campaign that you're doing because you didn't want to just tell the story but you wanted people to get involved in helping with the reconciliation process happening in Rwanda.

Could you tell us a little bit about the Living Bricks project that you are working on?

Laura: Sure. Living Bricks is the campaign that we built with Prison Fellowship International because a lot of people would come up to us after screenings and say, "We love this. We're so moved by the story, but how can we get involved in it? How can we help Rwanda through the reconciling?" And in the movie, one of the stories we feature is about a project that's run by Prison Fellowship in which the ex-prisoners are coming out of prison.

They're wanting to do something tangible to show their remorse for what they've done and to try to give back something to their community and to the people whose families they killed.

And so, there's this amazing house building project where the ex-prisoners build homes for their victim's families. The result is a village where you have killers and their families living side by side with survivors of genocide and their families and they've reconciled.

It's such an incredible portrait of this radical forgiveness that we keep talking about. If you can actually live shoulder to shoulder with the people who used to be your most bitter enemy, there's hope in the world.

And so, Living Bricks is our campaign to try to build another village of reconciliation like the one that you see in the movie. And so, what we're doing this Lent Season, actually, we're starting something called the "Forty Days of Forgiveness."

We're looking at the 40 days starting Ash Wednesday, February 17th going up through Easter Sunday and saying let's partner with churches and schools, universities, whoever and to focus this time, this season leading up to Easter to engage people in this concept of reconciliation and forgiveness."
And to invite people hosting the screenings of the film in order to try to raise the money to "Build a Home" in the Living Bricks village. And so our goal in the 40 days is to try to partner with enough organizations to build 40 homes in 40 days.

Gabe: Now, how much does a home cost? Does a church commit to a home or to some number of bricks that build a home?

Laura: They can commit to whatever they feel comfortable with. Ideally, a church would commit to building one home and that is $5,000 and 100% of that goes directly to Rwanda, to this project. A home will be built within several months of getting the money and it happens very quickly. We've already built several of these homes.

You don't have to commit. If you can't raise all the money, that's OK. We're going to try to partner with many groups to make sure that we get at least 40 homes that can be built.

What I love about it is that there's a tangible ending to it. It's not something that people have to commit to for years and years. It boosts the economy in this little village, in this one area of Rwanda where we're doing this.

It gives homes to the neediest families. There's no discrimination about who gets the homes. It goes to the neediest family in that village, whether they're a killer in their family or a survivor in their family.
So the result is a real mixture of people from all different backgrounds, but they were all built by these repentant ex-prisoners.

So it's a great way to get people involved especially during Easter. Because one of the things we're kind of encouraging people is instead of giving something up this year for Easter Lent, focus more on giving and what you're to give to your community or give to the world.

We have a bunch of resources that we send out to people if people want to host the screening in their community. We have discussion questions and we send out a bag of Rwandan coffee to brew at your event, et cetera. So if people want to learn more about it, they can go to our website at AsWeForgiveMovie.com.

Gabe: The "As We Forgive" movie, can they view trailers? Would you encourage churches or just people in their own faith communities or in their home for a small group to go there and purchase the film to show?

Laura: Absolutely. You can purchase the DVD there. You can purchase the screening kit. What I was alluding to earlier is the screening event kits where you can, if you want to host a small group screening or a huge screening, there are different packages that you can choose from. You can also view the trailer there and read more about the background of the genocide. You can click on our link to the Living Bricks Village and learn more about that. It's all at AsWeForgiveMovie.com.

Gabe: One last thing, one of the cool stories that came out of this was PBS picked up this film and it played everywhere. Tell us about that and just what a cool thing that was for you.

Laura: Yeah. It was and has been such an exciting thing. My dream was to get it broadcast on PBS. It's been picked up now by at least 75% of all PBS stations all across the country and it's still being shown. People want to find out if it's going to show in their area. Again, go to AsWeForgiveMovie.com and you can look up upcoming air dates for the film on PBS.

Gabe: Very cool. Well, for those listening, I would really encourage you to check this out. I think what Laura has done here is just such a beautiful embodiment of a lot of what we've talked about with Q, The idea of embodying the Gospel today, where we're at in communities and just the power of seeing how this is played itself out, taking her filmmaking talent, her burden for the people of Rwanda, telling their story for the world to hear,

PBS picking it up so that more and more people are exposed to this Gospel idea of reconciliation and even then giving churches a chance to get involved to help build a home that literally helps this reconciliation process move along for these little villages.

Laura, it's just an incredible example of, I think, how the gospel is showing up through people in our culture today. So, thank you for doing that, and your husband, Tommy, who is also amazing, an Anglican priest and lives in Washington. He's just an amazing guy, too.

We're grateful for you guys partnering together and working on so many of these important projects. We hope your new delivery of your child that's coming soon comes along nicely and we're just excited to have you as a part of all this and thank you.

Laura: Thank you much. It was such a pleasure to be with you.

How have you witnessed the power of forgiveness transforming your community?
What are some ways that you can practice the lessons that have come from this tragedy?

Editor's Note: This image is from the movie poster for As We Forgive.

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