Cloak and Dagger

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Notes

1 Notable examples include Black Hawk Down, Blood Diamond, and The Constant Gardener; all follow this familiar model, in which Africans, typically poor and forlorn, are the backdrop to the actions of a white saviour.

2 B. Wainaina, ‘How to Write about Africa’, Granta, 147 (May 2019), 40th birthday special, Essays and Memoir, available at https://granta.com/how-to-write-about-africa/, retrieved 6 July 2019.

3 Nyamoya’s fictional story in the series bears close resemblance to the factual story of the militia leader Bosco Ntaganda. In early July 2019, the ICC found Ntaganda guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the DRC. See J. Burke, ‘DRC Warlord “The Terminator” Convicted of War Crimes’, Guardian, London, 8 July 2019, available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/08/drc-rebel-commander-bosco-ntaganda-the-terminator-convicted-over-war-crimes, retrieved 15 July 2019; see also https://www.icc-cpi.int/drc/ntaganda, retrieved 15 July 2019.

4 O.S. Buckon, Espionage in British Fiction and Film since 1900: The Changing Enemy (Lanham, Lexington Books, 2015).

5 Allegations that have circulated in the media about the RPFs activities have an easy association with this genre. For example, in 2014 the RPF was widely accused of assassinating its own ‘spy chief’: see https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/15/rwanda-who-killed-patrick-karegeya-exiled-spy-chief, retrieved 16 October 2019.

6 It would also be remiss to write this review without pointing out that Rwandans themselves have produced numerous films that speak to the genocide and associated issues. Although a longer commentary is, unfortunately, beyond the scope of this review, films made about and in Rwanda (‘Hillywood’) by Rwandans proliferate. The country recently launched its own film festival. It would be interesting to compare Black Earth Rising to films produced and shown in Hillywood, many of which are written and directed by Rwandans with first-hand experience of events. See Rwanda Film Festival website, available at http://rwandafilmfestival.net/, retrieved 15 July 2019.

7 A similar affliction affects the main protaganists in the controversial film by Joshua Oppenheimer, The Act of Killing, about the perpetrators of the 1965–66 massacres in Indonesia – perhaps the homage was intended.