The Stranger

Sangwa and Ngabo, a pair of teenage best friends who've been eking out a living in the big city in the years following the Rwandan genocide, drop in on Sangwa's hometown while on their way to fulfill a morally questionable mission. Their reception is complicated and chilly: "That boy you are with, don't you know he's a Tutsi? Don't you know Tutsis are nasty?" says Sangwa's father, a lanky and foreboding presence. "Hutus and Tutsis are enemies. Don't you know?" Much of the boys' emotional journey takes place without words, as Sangwa sinks back into the comforting rhythms of a home he left behind—turning over soil, patching a wall, his mother's doting, his father's eventual respect—while Ngabo grows increasingly impatient to leave the hostile little village and get on with their original endgame. The boys' friendship evolves and splinters, with the specter of genocide going pointedly unmentioned for a sizable chunk of the movie. The film is visually gorgeous—damp hills and red earth and quiet, restrained tableaus—and it climaxes with an astounding single-take, cathartic, spoken-word epic that dives unselfconsciously into pain, horror, and love for a fractured nation: "We saw rivers clogged with bodies, children killing...And the blood covered the earth." By Lindy West