A Journey to Reconcile

You don’t have to be crazy to write, produce, direct and market your own award-winning film but sometimes it feels that way, former Destin resident Laura Waters Hinson says.
“I wake up in the morning and it’s all I think about,” Hinson told The Log. “I think about it in my shower, I think about it on my ride to work, I think about it while I’m cooking, it’s always there. You have to be kind of insane ... Why do I do this to myself and my poor husband?”
The film is “As We Forgive,” Hinson’s documentary about the aftermath of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. The film won Best Documentary in the June 7 Student Academy Awards.
At the urging of the Rwandan government, more than 500,000 of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority, according to Human Rights Watch, were murdered by the Hutu majority between April and June 1994. During a 2005 church mission to Rwanda, Hinson learned the government was relieving its overcrowded prisons and backlogged courts by sending thousands of the killers home to confess their crimes and ask the survivors for forgiveness.
“Was this even possible?” Hinson said. “I could barely believe it. I returned a year later with a student film crew to follow the lives of two very different stories of Rwandans on a journey to reconcile with the people who killed their families.”
It wasn’t easy going, Hinson said: “Especially with the widows, when I was there, talking. I had to go into journalism mode, where I was feeling only to a degree what they were telling me. I knew if I fully allowed myself to process the stories I heard, I would be a wreck, I would be unable to make it through the shoot.”
When she interviewed the killers, on the other hand, “I was shocked by my response ... I went away feeling compassion for them. The ones I met were quite humbled, broken and ashamed by what they’d done. I came away from it with a sense of the brokenness of an entire nation ... That doesn’t excuse anything, it was horrible, but it was a dreadful picture of human depravity and brokenness.”
Hinson became interested in making documentaries in 2002, after the “terrible breakup of an engagement” pushed her to rethink her life. She realized she hated her marketing job and that documentaries combined everything she wanted to do: Journalism, photography, storytelling and changing the way people thought.
Hinson applied to documentary film schools and decided on American University in Washington, D.C., where she lived. “As We Forgive” was her thesis project.
Making her first film in a third-world nation was a learning experience in itself, Hinson said: “Everything’s difficult, transportation, electricity, food ... I was director and producer so I didn’t have anyone dealing with the logistics of who was going to drive us and how we were going to eat lunch in the middle of nowhere, Africa.
“I learned that in order to get what you want, to make the film you want to make, you have to ask questions and ask them again, you have to talk about your vision for your film again and again until people understand it.”
Hinson said that since shooting wrapped up, she’s also had a crash course in marketing: Creating Image Bearer Pictures to promote and distribute the film, organizing an American screening tour, arranging a DVD release and planning an outreach campaign in Rwanda. Her day job as a freelance photographer has been “on hold” for 10 months.
“I’ve pretty much devoted my life to this,” Hinson said, adding that she’s lucky her husband of 11 months, Thomas Hinson, is so patient with her.
Hinson said when she learned she’d been nominated for the Student Oscars, she had no idea how big a deal it was until she saw how many directors, producers and cinematographers turned out for the ceremony.
“These are people who are typically very difficult to contact or meet with,” Hinson said, “but suddenly the gatekeepers were gone, and they were interested in talking to us students.
“The greatest moment came when I was approached at one of the parties by Caleb Deschanel, one of the best cinematographers in Hollywood, the five-time Oscar nominee who photographed “National Treasure,” “The Patriot,” “The Passion of the Christ.” He told me that he loved my documentary, and that he was incredibly moved by the story.”
Hinson said winning the award has helped her make contacts in Hollywood, and will show future investors she can deliver on her commitments. She said promoting and distributing “As We Forgive” has kept her too busy to plan her next project, but she has ideas she’s researching.
“My goal is to make films that are redemptive,” Hinson aid. “A lot of documentaries are about investigating awful things in the world — I’m committed to finding stories that have an element of hope.”

For more about Hinson and “As We Forgive,” visit www.asweforgivethose.com.