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With four weeks and a shoestring budget, that kind of efficiency was necessary. "It ended up being a beautiful shoot because we all just worked so effortlessly together," Hinson says. But there wasn't really time to process the enormity of genocide. "When I was in Rwanda, I really had to kind of shut down in order to move through it. Whereas my friend, my roommate, cried through the whole thing. And in a way I lived vicariously through her mourning."

Talking to President Kagame

Rwanda's president Emmanuel Kagame, who is notoriously difficult to schedule an interview with, also granted the film crew a half-hour interview the day their flight was to depart. Hinson laughs, remembering the scene: After a half-hour interview, "I was sitting there in my dirty shirt and my Chacos and my dusty capri pants," being served a hot lunch on gold-rimmed plates because the President's assistant had called them at lunchtime. "We were completely exhilarated," said Hinson. "It just confirmed that it was an experience I felt was being divinely led."

Back in Washington D.C., Hinson got to work editing the film, shaping it to be something other than a simplistic or maudlin "Christian propaganda film."

She also wants the film to reach a secular audience. For this reason, she and her friend, Catherine Claire Larson, who wrote Zondervan's As We Forgive, a 2009 book based in part on the stories Hinson discovered in Rwanda, may not promote their projects together. (Zondervan aims more for the Christian market.)

Hinson's film focuses on three stories of murderers and victims of Rwanda's genocide: Nemeye Saveri and Rosaria Bankundiye, who had reconciled; John Nzabonimpa and Chantale Ukebereyinfura, who had not; and Joy Munyana, a genocide orphan who says she and her classmates no longer acknowledge Hutu/Tutsi designations.

The presence of the filmmakers is so light that when self-conscious John looks at the camera, it feels like he's looking at you. And when un-self-conscious Chantale, John's victim, ignores the camera completely, the documentary frame dissolves.

Interviewing Chantale

The subjects speak frankly about the genocide, about who killed and who was killed. Both John and Saveri have repented for their participation in the murders, but they also talk about it as a fact of life. They also admit that this hasn't eased the matter. Both John and Chantale admit that certain killing sites have a special horror for them. John, standing on the site of the house where he dragged Chantale's father to his death, said, "The house that was here was demolished by its owner. When I pass by this place I get chills and I feel terrified."

As We Forgive avoids preachiness and allows Chantale to make some convincing arguments that forgiveness won't change much. It doesn't spell out the obvious: that the subjects who have experienced reconciliation look about ten times as healthy and confident as those who haven't.

But by the end of the film, all of the film's subjects are on the reconciliation bandwagon. Hinson says this doesn't necessarily reflect the average situation. "I think there are lot of people who say that they've reconciled, but I think what it means is that they're just not killing each other. I think a much smaller number, a minority that is truly engaged in authentic reconciliation where real healing is happening." One of the factors is that the government—which Hinson describes as "not fully democratic"—is pushing reconciliation.

As We Forgive portrays the killers and the victims as appealing, believable, and fallible characters. Those elements become important as, in the last section of the film, Reinhold Niebuhr's quote, "Forgiveness is the final form of love," flashes across the screen.

"I think you can have practical forgiveness where you say, 'I will forgive you so I can be released from this anger,'" says Hinson. "But that's not the same as reconciliation. Forgiveness is simply a giving up of your right to be angry. Reconciliation goes a step further and is a restoration of the relationship between the person who's been aggrieved and the perpetrator. In the case of Rwanda, I don't think it's possible for people to reconcile without a relationship with God."

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