Rwandan film Remnants to premiere at Kigali's AAIFF Africa on 15 October

Remnants, a 25-minute Rwandan fiction film about memory and family, will premiere on 15 October 2026 at the French Institute in Kigali, during the All African Independent Film Festival (AAIFF Africa), The New Times reported on 6 October. It will be the film's first public screening in Rwanda, the paper said.

The film is directed by Zion Sulaiman and produced by Zion Films Company Ltd. According to The New Times, it is in Kinyarwanda and English, with English subtitles.

The story follows Lilly, a girl born after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. She has never met her grandfather and has only one damaged photograph of him. She takes it to Emmanuel, a photographer and photo restorer, hoping he can restore the face of the man she never knew.

Emmanuel knew her grandfather, Enock, and carries a painful history of his own from 1994. As he works on the picture, buried memories resurface and he faces questions of guilt, loss and responsibility, according to the paper's account.

"For us, the film is really about a generation born after the Genocide trying to understand the people and memories they inherited, and about what happens when history survives in photographs even when people don't," Sulaiman was quoted as saying by The New Times.

The New Times also quoted the director describing it as a "deeply human story about memory, silence, guilt and the photographs that carry what people cannot."

Sulaiman's earlier work includes the 100-minute documentary Beyond the Genocide, released in December 2024. It examines the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and Rwanda's later recovery, reconciliation and national unity, according to a report carried by allAfrica on 13 January 2026. The film was selected for GOOD DOCS, a US-based platform that curates educational documentaries for universities and academic institutions and operates under SAGE Publishing.

AAIFF Africa runs from 15 to 17 October 2026 at the French Institute of Rwanda (Institut Français du Rwanda) in Kigali. This year's festival is the third edition, according to the festival listing on ICICine.

The festival was established in 2024 by Scott Hillier, whom ICICine describes as an Oscar-winning director and producer, as a sister festival to ÉCU – The European Independent Film Festival. It screens short and feature films, documentaries and animation, and its awards cover these and other categories. According to The New Times, Hillier is also credited with creative guidance on Remnants.

The organisers' website says tickets for the in-person screenings in Kigali are sold through Eventbrite. Enquiries go to [email protected].