Tell us a little about yourself…
My name is Mutiganda wa Nkunda, I’m a self-taught Rwandan filmmaker who also loves to watch and talk about films. I studied Agriculture in University but upon graduating I decided to go back to my childhood dream: making films. Since then, I wrote about cinema as a journalist, have made films and TV series, and also have conducted workshops on cinema with different institutions in Rwanda.
Right now I have directed 3 feature film: Nameless (2021), Phiona, A Girl From Madrid (2025) and MUCOMA: THE BATTLE OF A COUPLE (2025), the latter which is a film made for TV.
What inspired you to become a filmmaker, and how has your heritage influenced your work?
I grew up in the post-genocide Rwanda, as when the genocide against the Tutsis in 1994 happened I was 4 and a half. So, right after the genocide, life was so grey. People had died and hills were full of ruins and there were no fun activities to do as a child. Luckily, sometime then, there came a wave of popular films translated in Kinyarwanda – a wave that came from Uganda – where a person known as a VJ talks over the film’s action and translating the dialogues for entertainment. So, when I was 7 I discovered this and then I had found a fun activity to do: watch films. Only American action movies, Chinese kung-fu films and Bollywood films were shown in these makeshift cinemas, so, it was magic for me but I couldn’t dream of making things like those. It was until when I was 13 when I saw Bollywood film, Disco Dancer, and the mother-son relationship depicted in the film stuck with me because I could see my relationship with my mother.
So, ever since I said that I was going to make films. I even wrote a film that was inspired by that in my school notebook starring me and my mother. But that was a childish thing to do hahah. It was when I saw Taxi Driver (Scorsese) and The Black Girl (Sembene) that I found that there is something serious about this and decided to pursue cinema full time as a career. So, when I could make films, I started to look at the contemporary Rwandan society especially the women in it and that’s primarily the protagonists in my films.
What challenges have you faced as a filmmaker of African origin, and how did you overcome them?
As a filmmaker from an African continent, we face a lot of challenges but primarily is the independence in creation. There are no funding in our countries and most of the time we have to look elsewhere, and it restricts the independence in creation because, whether conscious or subconscious, to get funded, there’s an expectation in the story you tell and the way you tell it, because there’s something expected about an “African film” which is by the way a term I reject because it reduces the African countries and their cultural diversity to a single entity.
Maybe that’s why I decided to go my own way and make films without waiting for the funding, express my own ideas by any means necessary. But doing that has also its own challenge because it’s never easy to get films in international festivals, where the top priority is given to the films that went through the “proper” channels.
What advice would you give to aspiring African filmmakers aiming to share their stories on a global stage?
I myself am still trying to find my ground and I don’t know if I’m in the place to give advice, but if I have to tell someone something is to try to tell your story by any means necessary.
When I started making films I always was selling my phone to fund my short film, and everyone was taking me for crazy. I’m a very impulsive and impatient person, and this maybe helps. So, go make that film, and let the world see what’s in you.
