FRANÇOIS-XAVIÉR DESTORS
BIO
His commitment to filmmaking was forged in Rwanda, alongside survivors of the Tutsi genocide. After publishing a first book on the challenges of representing genocide in cinema, he directed his first feature-length documentary there, Rwanda, The Penalty Area.
As both a writer and director of historical documentaries for television (Paris, A Capital History; The Voices of Srebrenica; The 68 Years; Mandela, A Symbol Against Apartheid; Thiaroye 44), he explores the ways people inhabit a hostile world. He filmed Norilsk, The Ice Embrace (2018) in Siberia and Toxicily (2023), focused on one of Europe’s largest petrochemical zones. Didy is his fourth feature-length documentary.
FILMOGRAPHY
Rwanda, The Penalty Area, 2014. Documentary.
Thiaroye 44, 2022. Documentary.
Toxicily, 2023. Documentary.
Didy, 2024. Documentary.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
How does one honor the memory of a loved one with a film? How does one make up for the lack of traces and the blurred memories? How can one find the right distance from the historical events that shaped Didy’s and Gaël’s lives? How does one tell and share an intimate story with the public at large, while still respecting the modesty so dear to Rwandan culture?
Today, Gaël knows that his story, the story of Didy and of all the women around her, are also the stories of thousands of others drowned in an ocean of suffering, thousands of anonymous deaths. Like so many others, his mourning was taken from him by time, the urgency of survival and protective silence. He invites us to follow in his footsteps, firm and determined, in a role, his own, of a young artist embarking on a journey into the meanders of his orphaned memory. In doing so, he offers us the chance to get to the heart of a fragile yet powerful family bond, the only one that can with stand the madness of humankind.