Earth Made of Glass

Earth Made of Glass looks back at the horrors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. But it also looks forward to truth, peace and reconciliation taking place now and moving into the future. Two men stand at the center of this moving documentary. In a series of interviews, Rwandan president Paul Kagame addresses the tragedies of his Rwanda‘s past. With a quiet passion for his country, he expresses the need for forward movement on Rwanda’s own terms, not on terms established by an international community. A search for another kind of peace, an individual, deeply personal peace, is interspersed with the Kagame interviews. Jean Pierre Sagahutu’s parents, four brothers and three sisters were killed in the terror. He survived by hiding in a septic tank for more than two months. The film chronicles his search for the man who killed his father; his aim is to impress on his own son what the events meant in 1994, and what they mean for lives to come. In the course of his investigation, he encounters others who participated in the days of rage, slowly eliciting confession and remorse, rationalization and evasion. These two accounts become a fabric woven of pain, anger, understanding and hope. For telling the Rwandan story through two lenses that illuminate each other and the Rwandan story as a whole, a Peabody goes to Earth Made of Glass.