Maybe it really was the innocent hand of an infant clasping a soldier’s index finger that was to determine the course of three lives. Lives that did not end in early death after all, but continued in the asylum of a foreign country. The Rutikaras reside on the outskirts of the capital of Rwanda and call their newborn child Justice, because justice is really becoming scarce in their country. In the spring of 1994, when the little boy is six months old, the political situation is getting increasingly tense, the Tutsi ethnic minority is being hunted, abused and murdered by the Hutu militias. In the summer of that year, the world learned of the extent of the violence: a genocide with hundreds of thousands killed. The Rutikaras are affected, too. But with luck, chance and their unperturbable baby they manage to save themselves in the care of the United Nations.
Director Justice Rutikara, born in Kigali and grown up in Quebec, is the son of Valentine and Jean-Claude, who report from offscreen. His first animated film, carried by broadly coloured images, an impressive factuality and mild poetry, is a memento that rises above the individual and takes on a universal note in the chorus of human sounds, all the unifying and threatening ones.

In a sterile white examination room, a young woman is asked by a doctor to undress completely. An exhaustive examination of the protagonist’s skin begins during which every centimetre, the palm of her hand, the sole of her foot, the back and also the genital area are closely scrutinised. The doctor meticulously probes every nook and cranny of the young woman’s outer shell until she is able to identify a suspicious birthmark. A timely appointment to remove the mole is made.

Exposed and irritated, the protagonist finds herself confronted with her fears about the surgery and the after-effects of the examination. A tiny birthmark triggers an inner process: an analysis of her own body and the control others are allowed over it. Fragile lines on scarred paper and a tonal design that gives us goosebumps make us participate intensely in her emotions.