Idris Elba, best known for his Machiavellian  turn as Stringer Bell the second in command of an illicit band of brothers on HBO's The Wire, brings his talents to another HBO production, Sometimes in April. In a feature film directed by noted storyteller Raoul Peck (Lumumba), Elba delivers a solid performance as Augustin Muganza, a Hutu soldier married to a Tutsi woman and a father of three in 1994 Rwanda.

© 2005 HBO Films 
Idris Elba in HBO's Sometimes in April

Described by Peck as a fictional account based on a million true stories, Sometimes in April not only provides a personal look at the Muganza family's struggle to survive the deaths squads, it also presents a sweeping chronicle of the crimes perpetrated by Rwandan extremists against their countrymen, an indictment of the incomprehensible silence of world leaders in light of such human tragedy and the tribunals conducted by the UN so that the world could assuage its own guilt about its past inaction.

Sometimes in April is a welcome addition to the collection of films that have covered the 1994 Rwandan genocide. As a former journalist and a highly-regarded documentary filmmaker, Peck's grasp and depiction of the many facets of these disturbing events in world history is excellent. To present this story that describes and reconciles the past, Peck sets the film in two periods that unfold concurrently. Initially, the format of interspersing flashbacks throughout the contemporary story line works seamlessly as captions introduce time shifts. In the third act of the film, the filmmaker abandons the use of textual signals and instead relies on distinctive scenic backdrops to indicate a change from 2004 to 1994. This technique of differentiating the flashbacks and contemporary sequences, while artistically clever, may confuse viewers unfamiliar with detecting contextual shifts. M

March 2005