Earth Made of Glass, a documentary movie by Deborah Scranton wins Peabody award (Image: themoviebanter.com)
Deborah Scranton’s documentary movie, Earth Made of Glass, won the Peabody Awards for this year.
Earth Made of Glass, which premiered in 2010 during the Tribeca Film Festival, talks about the wake of the war in Rwanda. In 1994, this country had a mass genocide involving Hutu racial extremists killing the Tutsis. Estimates of the death toll vary between 500,000 to 1,000,000 deaths.
Deborah Scranton, from New Hampshire, got her inspiration to make the film when she interviewed Paul Kagame, the current President of Rwanda. Upon winning the Peabody, Deborah said this was something she dreamed of and aspired to attain as a filmmaker. She hopes the documentary will shed light on how violence is stoppable.
The film is all about a genocide survivor, Jean-Pierre Sagahutu, and President Kagame.
By hiding inside a septic tank, Jean-Pierre Sagahutu survived the genocide. 15 years later, he went on a mission to find the murderer of his father. Finally confronting the murderer, Jean-Pierre said he was not there to forgive the man, but to show the violence stops in him. He is looking for peace, and any hatred will not carry on to his children.
President Kagame’s goals as President are similar; that is, he wants to stop violence in the country and charge all criminals involved in the genocide.
Kagame exposes France’s participation in the genocide with documents revealing the country shipped weapons to the Hutu extremists. Now Kagame is battling it out with what seems to be a French counterattack, as Rose Kabuye, his aide, is facing terrorism charges since 2008.
Paul Kagame, considered by many Rwandans interviewed in the film as a hero, is the one responsible for stopping the genocide according to locals. Kagame stated that the violence stops here; the country no longer has Hutu or Tutsi divisions, everyone is Rwandan.