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ITVS Community Cinema: Pushing the Elephant
Price: free
It's hard to think of a more fitting film for Women's History Month than Beth Davenport and Elizabeth Mandel's intimate portrait of Rose Mapendo, a Congolese Tutsi who endured unimaginable hardships during the ethnic violence that enveloped the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the late 1990s. Mapendo and her family were put in a prison camp, where her husband was executed — and where, shortly after, she gave birth to twins on the prison floor. Mapendo's courageous story inspired the foundation of refugee assistance organization Mapendo International, and she's become a tireless advocate for peace and reconciliation in the region. While there's ample footage of Mapendo the humanitarian in action, Davenport and Mandel wisely focus on her current family life in Phoenix — in particular, her reunion with her daughter Nangabire, who was left behind in Congo and hasn't seen her mother in 13 years. Scenes of Nangabire trying to adjust to life as a teen in suburban America are especially moving, and help to drive home the movie's overriding theme: the healing power of forgiveness. But while Mapendo encourages Nangabire to forgive her father's murderers, she still struggles to forgive herself for an unthinkable "Sophie's choice" she was forced to make, which she recalls with brutal honesty in the film's emotional climax.
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Nashville Public Library
- 615 Church St., Nashville Downtown TN 37219
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615-862-5800
- www.library.nashville.org/
- (based on 2 user reviews)
