by SARAH ROWLAND

Luc Picard should start making room in his display case for the Jutra that he will very likely be taking home next year. His role in Robert Favreau’s Un dimanche à Kigali is the kind of stuff that makes award jurors drool (think The English Patient or The Constant Gardener done with a fraction of the budget).

Based on the Gil Courtemanche novel Un dimanche à la piscine à Kigali, Picard plays Bernard, a frumpy, middle-aged journalist who’s on assignment in Rwanda to make a documentary on the HIV pandemic. However, the focus of his piece takes a drastic turn when an AIDS-riddled interview subject makes a foreboding farewell speech to the camera—something to the effect that he’s grateful to be dying a slow painful death rather than being hacked up with a machete like the rest of his fellow Tutsis will soon be. And so begins the 1994 Hutu-led genocide campaign in which hundreds of thousand of Tutsis were butchered to death.

In the midst of all the escalating racial violence, Bernard falls in love. Isn’t that always the way—when you’re not looking for it, you meet someone special. The object of his desire is a young, Tutsi-Hutu goddess (Fatou N’Diaye), whose fierce loyalty is at first charming.

When Bernard tries to get her out of Rwanda, she refuses to flee without him. Fair enough. So he decides to go with her, but then she says she can’t leave without her father’s blessing, and to do this she’s got to go through several checkpoints where machete-wielding savages await her. What keeps her from getting on our nerves at this point is that we see her through Bernard’s eyes, who really does seem like a man brought back to life by the power of love (hence, the Jutra chances).

Like most films that depict the horrors of ethnic cleansing, Un dimanche à Kigali stays with you a long time after leaving the theatre. And in this case, it’s mostly thanks to Picard’s performance. He really does deserve all the accolades he gets. After all, any actor required to envision his soulmate getting raped with a broken wine bottle deserves props and some.

Un dimanche à kigali opens Friday, April 14

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