Grey Matter is the very first full-length fiction film by a director from Rwanda produced in that country. It provides a glimpse from the inside of the traumas of genocide. This partially autobiographical debut starts as a film-within-the-film in which a young director describes the faltering production of The Cycle of the Cockroach (Tutsis were called cockroaches). Not without a critical note, this introduction shows that it is basically impossible to make an artistic film in Rwanda. A funding committee only wants to give the director money if he makes films that promote educational government projects such as AIDS prevention. The filmmaker does pursue his idiosyncratic plan, however. He wants to make an experimental film about a brother and sister who take up arms against the demons of genocide. Wearing a crash helmet, the brother fights alone against the insanity that is nestling in his brain: grey matter that can create, destroy and raze itself.
