Love Radio

Love Radio is a transmedia documentary about the process of reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda. Love Radio straddles the thin line between fact and fiction. At first glance it tells a linear, almost fairy-tale narrative, based around the radio soap Musekeweya (‘New Dawn’). But a closer look reveals the complex reality. While in the soap happy endings predominate, reconciliation in real life is rather more intransigent. After the gruesome killings, how can perpetrators and victims live with and love each other? Love Radio combines film with photography, audio, text and archive material. Using fragments from the soap, portraits of the creators, fan mail from listeners and images of the magical ‘guilty’ landscape, it gradually becomes clear that ‘the truth’ does not exist – only different versions of reality. Like a soap, Love Radio unfolded in episodes, with its own characters, plotlines and cliff-hangers. The first episode went live on 7 April 2014, exactly 20 years after violence broke out. For the next 100 days – the duration of the genocide – new instalments were released on a fortnightly basis. At the end of that time, the documentary will be available to view as a linear production.