As a filmmaker, Anne Aghion has been drawn to places as far-ranging as
rural Rwanda, the ice fields of Antarctica and the slums of Managua.
She has been praised by critics both as a director of unique and poetic
vision, and a documentarian who conveys a strong sense of the people
and places she covers. Her work has also earned her, among other
honors, a UNESCO Fellini Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, an Emmy, and
the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival's Nestor Almendros
Award for courage in Filmmaking.
Her new feature documentary "My Neighbor My Killer" caps nearly ten
years of filming in post-genocide Rwanda, where a daring experiment in
reconciliation and justice-the Gacaca Law (pronounced ga-CHA-cha)-has
been put in place. There, over time, Aghion charted the emotional
impact of a system of local open-air courts that adjudicates genocide
crimes, and returns killers to their homes in exchange for confessions.
For most of her life, Aghion has been a dual resident of New York and
Paris. She spent the first eight years of her career in both editorial
and administrative capacities at The New York Times Paris bureau, and
at the International Herald Tribune. Moving into film, she worked in a
variety of capacities including videographer, production and
postproduction manager with filmmakers such as Richard Leacock &
Valérie Lalonde, and Judith Abitbol, and for documentaries aired on
major cable networks such as Canal+ and ARTE.
Aghion was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005, and has
received repeat grants from the Soros Documentary Fund, the Sundance
Documentary Fund, and the United States Institute of Peace. She also
received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the
Compton Foundation, and the Peter S. Reed Foundation. In addition, she
was able to generate funding for the Gacaca Trilogy from the Austrian
Development Agency, the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swiss
Development Cooperation, and Oxfam Novib thanks to the significant
impact of "Gacaca."
Anne Aghion holds a Bachelor of Arts Magna Cum Laude in Arab Language
and Literature from Barnard College at Columbia University in New York,
and following her studies, spent two years living in Cairo.
