Our Lady of the Nile

 

“Our Lady of the Nile” (or “Notre-Dame du Nil”) is a French film originally released in Canada in 2019. It´s based on a novel by Rwandan author Scholastique Mukasonga. Judging by Wikipedia´s somewhat confused entry, the novel is probably more interesting than the film (as usual). Wiki´s entry on the film itself is atrocious and was clearly written by somebody who never watched it.

The plot of the film is set in Rwanda in 1973. Most of the characters are Rwandan girls at an elite Catholic school, Notre-Dame du Nil, named after a cult statue of the Virgin Mary situated at the supposed source of the river Nile. Other characters include a White nun, a Rwandan priest and a crazy White land-owner obsessed with the history of ancient Egypt. The film probably contains a lot of Rwandan cultural references, making it part-incomprehensible to a non-native audience.

Unsurprisingly, a large portion of the plot revolves around the ethnic tensions between the Hutu and the Tutsi, the two principal ethnic groups in both Rwanda and neighboring Burundi. Mukasonga is Tutsi and the film has a clear pro-Tutsi slant. The villain of the piece is a Hutu extremist activist, Gloriosa, who invites an armed Hutu militia onto school grounds to massacre the Tutsi students! Gloriosa defaces the Virgin Mary statue, since she thinks it looks too Tutsi. 

The film also has an anti-colonialist slant. At one point, it´s strongly implied that the “unique” dark-skinned Madonna statue is really White. The Hutu regime tried to run Rwanda almost as a Catholic theocracy in close alliance with Belgium and France, so perhaps this is a veiled criticism of the Hutu, suggesting they are really being colonialist enforcers? Another colonialist holdover at the school is that the Kinyarwanda language is banned - the students must speak French even among themselves. And when the Hutu priest sermonizes, he quotes the Bible story about the curse of Ham, often used to justify slavery! 

Otherwise, I was struck by the bizarrely contradictory culture depicted in the film. The elite girl school, the purpose of which is presumably to give the students a modern education, is fanatically Catholic and gives a near-medieval impression. It´s anti-sex, anti-evolution and run by nuns and priests. Meanwhile, many of the students have African superstitions and believe in magic, spirit-possession, etc. One of the characters is instructed by an old witch how to exorcize the spirit of a dead Tutsi queen. Gorillas are said to be humans who returned to the jungle.

The film ends with one of the main characters (perhaps the author´s alter ego) stating that she is leaving for Burundi, at the time controlled by Tutsi. But this simply puts the spotlight on the problematic notion of the Tutsi being “good” and the Hutu being “bad” (a reputation these tribes got in the West during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide). In Burundi, the Tutsi oppressed the Hutu and massacred them in pretty much the same way as the Hutu massacred the Tutsi in Rwanda…

Perhaps the gorillas did the right thing, going back to the rain forest when they saw that humans simply can´t help killing each other. Maybe Our Lady of the Nile joined them there…