Sometimes in April

2005 2h 20m EN

👍

7.1

SOLID

⭐

7.7

IMDB

★7.1TMDB · 92★7.7IMDB · 6,334

DramaHistoryWar

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

Two brothers are divided by marriage and fate during the 100 horrifying days of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

“Some stories are better left unspoiled.”

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Cast

Idris Elba
Augustin
Carole Karemera
Jeanne
Pamela Nomvete
Martine
Oris Erhuero
Honoré
Fraser James
Xavier
Abby Mukiibi Nkaaga
Colonel Bagosora
Cleophas Kabasita
Valentine
Noah Emmerich
Lionel Quaid

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Raoul Peck
Languages: English, Kinyarwanda
Countries: Rwanda, France, United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Released 21 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, Kinyarwanda.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

International production across 3 countries: Rwanda, France, United States of America.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Raoul Peck, shot by Éric Guichard. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Bruno Coulais. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Jacques Comets shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Idris Elba and Carole Karemera and Pamela Nomvete carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt0400063 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Raoul Peck directs. Éric Guichard behind the camera. Bruno Coulais scores. Jacques Comets cuts. Produced in Rwanda, France, United States of America. Dialogue in English, Kinyarwanda.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Released 21 years ago.
2Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, Kinyarwanda.
3International production across 3 countries: Rwanda, France, United States of America.
4Directed by Raoul Peck, shot by Éric Guichard. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
5Original score by Bruno Coulais. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
6Editor Jacques Comets shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
7Idris Elba and Carole Karemera and Pamela Nomvete carry the top of the cast.
8IMDB entry: tt0400063 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
9Only 92 TMDB ratings — you're getting ahead of the curve on this one.

The technical file

Cinematography: Éric Guichard
Original score: Bruno Coulais
Editing: Jacques Comets
Production design: Benoît Barouh
Costume design: Paule Mangenot
Makeup / hair: Nurith Barkan
VFX supervisor: François Vagnon
Runtime: 140 min · 2h 20m
Status: Released
Original language: EN
IMDB: Sometimes in April (2005)
IMDB rating: 7.7/10 · 6,334 votes
MPAA: TV-MA

Awards

Nominated for 1 Primetime Emmy. 3 wins & 14 nominations total

Also by

Raoul Peck

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

Community reviews

What people are saying

CinemaSerf2026-07-20
★ 7/10
I think sometimes when we see eye-watering statistics of wartime casualties, we begin to become a little santised to their effects. Just how could the Hutu and the Tutsi manage to slaughter 800,000 of their own countrymen? It doesn't seem plausible, and yet it happened - and here, Idris Elba leads a cast of competent acting talent as his "Augustin" takes us on a bit of a fragmented but effective tour of this genocide. Rwanda itself is one of those countries crafted by post-colonial Europeans (in this case the Belgians) who loved to draw lines dictating where one nation started and stopped, paying scant regard to tribal ancestries and difficulties. Usually ensuring that their friends were left in government, resentment soon boiled over as the president is assassinated and the Hutu descend on their "cock-roach" foes and any from amongst their own numbers who urged reconciliation. "Augustin" is a military man who has hitherto lived well enough with his family, but now he has become separated from his much less fortunate brother "Honoré" (Oris Erhuero) and is faced with having to - quite literally - execute orders that he abhors. It's that inner conflict that is the source of the narrative of this often quite ghastly watch. For reasons that I didn't find entirely helpful, auteur Raoul Peck has us dancing about with the timelines and so whilst that avoids us just getting a day-by-day chronology of misery, it does give us a bit of the end at the beginning and so robs the film of an element of it's personal jeopardy. That said, though, this is stil a potent and powerful drama that illustrates the brutality of mankind when fuelled by feelings of hate and loathing that go back generations. The difference is, though, that generations ago their weaponry was much more rudimentary unlike in the early 1990s where bullets and jeeps rendered every corner of this country susceptible to random attacks by those only loosely affiliated warlords under the general command of Paul Kigali. On the diplomatic front, this chooses to focus more on American attempts at mediation - thanks to Prudence Bushnell (Debra Winger), and her own characterisation goes some way to capturing both the horrors of war and also the ineffectiveness of the UN's hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned blue-caps whose presence was only ever tokenly respected. There is a great deal of violence here and though it's not as graphic as it might have been, a combination of subtle photography and creative sound editing leaves us in no doubt of the grimness faced by a largely rural and uneducated population dealing with the equivalent of a bullet-fuelled scythe traversing the nation. It is not a documentary, and there does appear to be quite a bit of historical simplification and creative licence taken here - but if it inspires people to delve deeper into this atrocity then Elba, Carole Karemera and Abby Mukiibi Nkaaga - as well as whole host of enthusiastically convincing local civilians, have done their jobs well.

Production companies