Rwandan film Remnants to premiere at Kigali's AAIFF Africa on 15 October

Remnants, a 25-minute Rwandan fiction film about memory and family, will premiere on 15 October 2026 at the French Institute in Kigali, during the All African Independent Film Festival (AAIFF Africa), The New Times reported on 6 October. It will be the film's first public screening in Rwanda.

The film is directed by Zion Sulaiman and produced by Zion Films Company Ltd. It is in Kinyarwanda and English, with English subtitles.

The story follows Lilly, a girl born after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. She has never met her grandfather and has only one damaged photograph of him. She takes it to Emmanuel, a photographer and photo restorer, hoping he can restore the face of the man she never knew.

Emmanuel knew her grandfather, Enock, and carries a painful history of his own from 1994. As he works on the picture, buried memories resurface and he faces questions of guilt, loss and responsibility.

"For us, the film is really about a generation born after the Genocide trying to understand the people and memories they inherited, and about what happens when history survives in photographs even when people don't," Sulaiman said, as quoted by The New Times.

The New Times also quoted the director describing it as a "deeply human story about memory, silence, guilt and the photographs that carry what people cannot."

Sulaiman's earlier work includes the 100-minute documentary Beyond the Genocide, released in December 2024. It examines the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and Rwanda's later recovery, reconciliation and national unity, according to a report carried by allAfrica on 13 January 2026. The film was selected for GOOD DOCS, a US-based platform that curates educational documentaries for universities and academic institutions and operates under SAGE Publishing.

AAIFF Africa runs from 15 to 17 October 2026 at the French Institute of Rwanda (Institut Français du Rwanda) in Kigali. This year's festival is the third edition, according to the festival listing on ICICine.

The festival was established in 2024 by Scott Hillier, whom ICICine describes as an Oscar-winning director and producer, as a sister festival to ÉCU – The European Independent Film Festival. It screens short and feature films, documentaries and animation, and its awards cover these and other categories. Hillier is also credited with creative guidance on Remnants.

At the festival's second edition, which ended in Kigali on 12 October 2025, Kenya's The Yellow Dress, directed by Caroline Odongo, won Africa's Best Independent Film, according to the African entertainment and culture site Afrocritik. Xavier Ywaya won Best Actor for the same film, and Sarah, another Kenyan film, directed by Nick Reding, was named Africa's Best Independent Dramatic Feature Film.

The organisers' website gives the venue's address as 25 KG 624 St, Rugando, Kigali, and says tickets for the in-person screenings in Kigali are sold through Eventbrite. Enquiries go to [email protected].