Gilbert Ndahayo

Gilbert Ndahayo was born on Dec 10, 1975 in Rwanda. Gilbert Ndahayo's big-screen debut came with The Rwandan Night directed by Gilbert Ndahayo in 2013.

First Rwandan to be nominated for Sembene Ousmane Prize at ZIFF and the African Movie Academy Awards which a variety of international observers have fondly called "African Oscars."Two times winner of Best Documentary Feature at Silicon Valley African Film Festival.Recipient of the highest grant for the 2015 Rhode Island State Council on the Art for The Blood of the Chosen, Santa Clara County Commendation and US House of Representatives - Special Congregational Recognition, Certificate of Recognition California Legislature Assembly, The New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist and The Vivian G. Prins Fellowship for Artists at Risk.Gilbert Ndahayo graduated from the prestigious Columbia University with MFA Film Directing Program (2014). During his studies in New York, he wrote narrative scripts, directed and produced three award-winning documentary features. He also produced the Ugandan segment of the feature documentary Life in a Day (2011) directed by Kevin Macdonald and executive produced by YouTube and Ridley Scott - released at Sundance 2011. Ndahayo was the producer of Les fleurs du Rwanda (2008) which won the 2010 Goya Award winning documentary.Speaking to Deutsche Welle at the 2013 Berlinale Talent Campus, Gilbert Ndahayo announced the making of his trilogy The Rwandan Night (2013), The Rwandan Day and The Rwandan Silence in production.Prior to his graduate studies, Ndahayo worked as film editor for Rwanda Cinema Center. He studied History and English at Kigali Institute of Education. He also served as country coordinator and writer for BaobabConnection - an Afro-Dutch Youth Online Magazine, his passion for storytelling drove him to cinema in 2005.Born in a traditional village of Astrida, so named after Queen Astrid of Belgium, southern Rwanda in 1975, Gilbert Ndahayo migrated to New York City in 2008.Ndahayo's debut narrative short Scars of My Days (2006) aired on French television TV 5 Monde and premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2007 in the presence of an audience that included former US President Bill Clinton, Hollywood celebrities namely Robert DeNiro, Whoopi Goldberg and Everybody Loves Raymond's producer Jane Rosenthal.His documentary Behind This Convent (2008) received Verona Award for Best African Film and Signis First Commendation for Best African Documentary at Zanzibar International Film Festival in 2008 and subsequently toured European film festivals and screened at American universities. The Dutch film critic, Frank Witkam, brings out a comparison of Ndahayo's films, "Ndahayo's documentary makes me think of a few number of the best action filmmakers such as Hara Kazuo or, with the best work of Michael Moore." Ndahayo admits to having watched French New Wave movies when he was a boy.Rwanda: Beyond the Deadly Pit (2009) documents on tape the last hour of Ndahayo's parents and 52 members of his immediate family who were massacred during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Recipient of Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media, the film was released in 2011 on DVD and is subject of scholarly scrutiny.Rwanda: Beyond the Deadly Pit (2009) features in two Routledge's publications: Contemporary French and Francophone studies, Volume 14, Issue 5, 2010 under the title The Pertinence of Impertinent Storytelling in Gilbert Ndahayo's documentary Rwanda: Beyond the Deadly and AFI Film Readers Documentary Testimonies: Global Archives of suffering in the section of Mediating genocide: producing digital survivor testimony in Rwanda.In 1994, Ndahayo was a young boy showing off his hip hop skills, football and a gold medal from the 200 meters race at the national high school Olympics. With the outbreak of the Rwandan genocide, his parents and 52 members of his immediate family were massacred.Often, Ndahayo works with professors in African cinema and genocide programs, and facilitates study-tour to Rwanda for American and European universities including Yale University, Webster University, Drury University Steven Spielberg's USC Shoah Foundation Institute and the Spanish' Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (UIMP).