Rwanda Princess

The Rwandan Joss Umuganwa grew up with her foster mother in Uganda. Her biological mother took Joss back to Rwanda when she was fifteen. Here, she was told the Tutsi king Musinga was her grandpa. It didn’t develop into a princess’ fairytale. The ethnic conflicts between Hutus and Tutsis tore the country apart. In 1994, this led to genocide, in which between 500,000 and one million people, mainly Tutsis, were butchered with machetes.
Joss fled to the Netherlands and now returns to Rwanda to finally visit her foster mother Jeanne Makaruhara and Clement, her mother’s youngest brother, with whom she reminisces about the past. Archive footage makes clear that the Belgian colonisers intentionally played the Hutus and Tutsis off against each other. The massacre did not come out of the blue. Now, the country is slowly recovering. Now and then, rumours crop up that the king, Joss' grandpa, is coming back. She sometimes leaves a message on his voicemail.