EVENT

Lecture - Meeting with Beata Umubieyi Mairesse
Prix Montluc Résistance et Liberté

The Fondation Fiminco is delighted to invite you to a Rencontre en lecture and video-projection with Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, survivor of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda and author of Le Convoi, winner of the Prix Montluc Résistance et Liberté 2024 special jury prize.

On June 18, 1994, a few weeks before the end of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, teenager Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse was saved by a Swiss humanitarian convoy. Thirteen years later, she makes contact with the BBC team who filmed and photographed the convoy. This marked the start of a relentless investigation between Rwanda, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, France, Italy and South Africa, in order to piece together the sequence of events with living witnesses: survivors, aid workers and journalists. Nourished by reflections on the act of bearing witness and the value of traces, between archive research and self-writing, Le convoi makes an essential contribution to the reappropriation and transmission of this collective memory.

The author looks back on her journey and this (en)quest in a meeting featuring readings and video projections. This exceptional event is part of the Montluc Résistance et Liberté prize, which has been awarded every year for the past 8 years to a French or foreign work illustrating the struggle for freedom and against oppression in all its forms. The jury, chaired by Jean-François Carenco, awarded its special 2024 prize to Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse.

The Prix Montluc Résistance et Liberté is a literary prize open to the world which, every year for the past 8 years, has highlighted a work of fiction, French or foreign, illustrating a fight for freedom and against oppression in all its forms.