Laura Waters Hinson is the director of “As We Forgive,” a compelling and inspiring documentary about the rebuilding of communities in Rwanda. Many of us struggle to forgive the driver who cuts us off or a family member who said something hurtful. This is the story of people who had to find a way to forgive the truly unforgivable.

In Rwanda, where 800,000 people were massacred in 1994, everyone who is left is either a perpetrator or a victim. There were simply too many people to jail, and so the government has released 50,000 prisoners back into the communities populated with the survivors, every one of whom lost friends and family members and must now live as neighbors with the people, sometimes the very individuals, who were responsible. As the movie’s website says,

Without the hope of full justice, Rwanda has turned to a new solution: Reconciliation. But can it be done? Can survivors truly forgive the killers who destroyed their families? Can the government expect this from its people? And can the church, which failed at moral leadership during the genocide, fit into the process of reconciliation today? In “As We Forgive,” director Laura Waters Hinson and narrator Mia Farrow explore these topics through the lives of four neighbors once caught in opposite tides of a genocidal bloodbath, and their extraordinary journey from death to life through forgiveness.

I spoke to Ms. Hinson by phone while we were both snowed in at our homes in the Washington DC area.

How do you define forgiveness?

It is complicated but forgiveness is in your heart, when looking at a wrong that has been done against you, it is saying to the person who has done that or just to yourself, “I no longer seek retribution or justice for what you have done to me. I’m letting that go. My right to be angry, my right to seek justice, I’m allowing that to go so that I can heal and move on with my life and be lifted of that burden.” You can do it therapeutically, you can do it alone, in your heart. You don’t even have to tell anybody that you’ve done it.

I would distinguish that from reconciliation, which is the next huge step where you say, “Not only have I forgiven you, but I want to work with you to rebuild to some degree my relationship with you.” That is much more difficult, much more rare.

In some cases it shouldn’t be done; if someone has traumatized you in a horrible way. But in Rwanda, these people are forced to be together. All these killers returning from prison are your neighbors. You see them everywhere you go. So what do you do? Do you reconcile, do you just forgive, or do you live isolated in your home?

I do not want to sound disrespectful to the victims of these unspeakable tragedies, but the perpetrators were victims in a way, too because they did not have freedom of choice either.

How did you find the two people who are the focus of the film and how did you get them to talk to you?

That was my chief concern going over there. This all-white American film crew — how would we gain the trust of the people? We needed a great ambassador, a translator, somebody who could get the vision of what were were trying to accomplish through a wild set of circumstances involving a recommendation on a church listserv that my roommate’s mother was on. I literally cried because he was so perfect. He himself was a survivor; he was hidden for three months protected by a Hutu friend. He went to all the people in the film and told them about what we were doing. He could relate to them and invariably they would say yes, they wanted to be a part of the film. I wrote out questions but he was the one who really interviewed them. All of the interviews ended with lots of hugs and we are still in close to those people today.

I think if you have the power to forgive, it makes you more open to people. If you can forgive, there’s really nothing they can do to hurt you.

That’s so true.

And in America, I think we find it easier to believe that something as horrific as genocide can occur than to believe that people can forgive and reach out to each other with generosity and humanity. How do you tell that story?

I watched other films on this issue and a lot of them focused on telling you many many stories of victims almost to the point where you were overwhelmed with suffering and then this rosy ending was added on. I wanted to focus on two main stories. And I wanted to give time to the perpetrators as well. I wanted people to envision themselves being those people. This was a journey I was going through personally when I was meeting those victims and then meeting the killers themselves. I was shocked that I identified with even the killers, too. Just normal people.

They just seemed like normal people who had done abnormal things.

You had hundreds of thousands of normal people who were involved in the genocide. They were farmers, they were dads, they were friends of the people in the movie. They were just normal people.

I asked a lot, “What made you do all these killings?” It’s a complicated answer. On one hand you had the mob mentality. On another level you had a corrupted government who had taken over the radio waves and the military and people were “educated” to hate their neighbors, to think of them as not actually human beings, that they were animals — the word “cockroach” was used a lot. There was physical pressure, too. The militia came to your village and said, “Hey, you, come over and help us kill these people.” If you didn’t, you would be killed, too. Many moderate Hutus were killed. And these were poor people. They were told that if they killed their neighbors, they could have their cow or their farm.

The idea of forgiveness is to see the normality in everyone, even people who do unthinkable things, the other end of the scale from thinking of them as non-human.

It was a humbling experience for me. I thought they were monsters or I would be afraid of them. But they were broken people, very mild-mannered, very ashamed. Not everyone, but many. It was very significant for them that they were trying to help, that the hands that had killed were now being used to build something for someone they had harmed. There is very little they can do, but it is something. It is important for survivors and the perpetrators. One of the survivors participates in a physical act of reconciliation to help one of the killers.

Many of these people would say to me, “I believe I have been forgiven by God. And so I will extend that forgiveness to these people even though they don’t deserve it.” That was central to those who seemed most authentically forgiving. That comes from their faith. On another level, you have the fact that the president has asked the whole country to reconcile. To forgive is not to forget. They remember the genocide and go over it and over it again to make sure no one forgets.

I’ve been given so much hope from this story. I went into it skeptically. I just couldn’t believe it. And I was so humbled, so struck by these people’s faith and their ability to act on what they believe. I was struck that they could enter into a relationship with the person who slaughtered their family. There are so many levels. It just changed me.

I love podcasts! I listen to them in the car and on the metro and even while cooking or cleaning the kitchen and they keep me entertained and engaged. And they all meet one of the other top requirements for a podcast — they are all divisible and interruptable witout too much bother so easily adapted to any time period available for listening. Here are some of my favorites, all free and available online and via iTunes.

• The Slate Culture Gabfest is a lively conversation about the top stories in media and popular culture each week. The current episode includes John Mayer’s controversial interview in Playboy and the updating of the all-star “We are the World” for the Haiti relief effort. I like the way they invite listeners into the conversation via their Facebook page.
• The Slate Spoiler Special is the kind of discussion all movie critics wish we could have because instead of explaining whether you should see a movie while trying not to give away too much it is a conversation for those who have already seen it with Slate’s sweet-voiced and always-astute critic Dana Stevens.
• NPR Culturetopia is a round-up of the best of NPR’s arts, culture, and media coverage with interviews, commentary, and reviews.
• The Moth has live performances of true stories told with no notes, each under 10 minutes or so. You never know what you will get — a best-selling author, a cop, a movie star, or a teenager participating in a workshop, a story to make you laugh or cry or give you goosebumps — or all three. But every single story has been utterly gripping and I have listened to many of them more than once.
• This I Believe is an international project engaging people in writing and sharing essays describing the core values that guide their daily lives. Over 70,000 have been recorded by famous leaders, great thinkers, and ordinary individuals. There are Nobel Prize winners, statesmen, teachers, writers, clergy, and artists. There are two different podcasts available — one of new essays and one from the archives of the original series back in the 1950’s.
• Ted Talks are brief presentations by some of the most provocative and inspiring thinkers of our time. Challenging, informative, touching, mesmerizing.
  

• Smithsonian Folkways is an enthralling exploration of music of all kinds. Folkways Records & Service Co. was incorporated in 1948 to bring the entire world of sound to listeners. The Smithsonian took over in 1987 and now operates it as a non-profit. The podcasts, some hosted by Michael Asch, the son of Folkways co-founder Moses Asch, explore the richness of the archive and the many cultures it represents.
• Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! is NPR’s weekly news quiz, funny, sharp, and of course very topical. One of the highlights each week is a visit by a celebrity, always someone very cool, who gets to chat with the host before being asked to answer three questions on a topic as far removed from his or her area of expertise as possible.
• StoryCorps like The Moth, is a podcast of true stories but these are less polished and more intimate and authentic. The mission is to honor each others stories by listening and these stories of struggle, learning, devotion, love, laughter, prayers, and joy are breathtaking.
• Legacy of Laughs is an archive of radio in the days before television when stars like Jack Benny, Martin and Lewis, and Edgar Bergen were as important to American culture as “Seinfeld” and “Friends” were in the heyday of the sitcom. It’s a lot of fun to listen to these vintage shows, commercials and all.

Like some of the food made with the substances produced by the corporation at the heart of this story, this movie is pleasant but leaves a sour aftertaste. It is inspired by the real-life story of one of the most massive cases of corporate corruption and crime in US history. Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) paid the then-record antitrust fine of $100 million and its top executives went to jail because of a global conspiracy to fix prices and production in violation of antitrust laws. None of this would have been uncovered without the cooperation of a top executive named Mark Whitacre. This film’s decision to present the story as farce and to focus on Whitacre and his flakier qualities is entertaining but unsatisfying.

Matt Damon plays Whitacre with an extra 30 pounds and a toupee that looks like a bird’s nest. He is a PhD but he is less an absent-minded professor type than a free-association, mind-like-a-pinball machine type, and we are privy to his thoughts as they go off in an almost random assortment of directions, often missing the point of what is going on around him as he muses about various questions and reassures himself. When the FBI is brought in to investigate an extortion attempt he reported, Whitacre tells the agent (“Star Trek’s: Enterprise’s” Scott Bakula) that he knows about something much bigger. This leads to an undercover operation spanning years and continents as Whitacre wears a wire to tape more than 200 conversations. He was one of the highest-ranking corporate officials ever to work as an informant. He was also embezzling millions of dollars and having a breakdown, possibly as a result of the stress of leading a double life.

Director Steven Soderburgh also gave us a moving drama about the feisty heroine Erin Brockovich, whose failings were quirky and endearing. Now he brings us a story about another real-life whistleblower presented as farce, with a bright, sit-com-y score by Marvin Hamlisch and the pacing and fonts of a 70’s comedy, familiar faces from television (including Tom and Dick Smothers), and seems to do everything possible to keep us from caring about the squirrelly main character. Whitacre, an accomplished man with a PhD (and now has several post-graduated degrees) who was a rising star at the company, comes across as clumsy, clueless, and narcissistic. We hear his random thoughts about an incongruous variety of topics. They come across as the musings of a doofus but they also show us his scientific curiosity and analytic distance. And we see how both contribute to his success and his downfall.

The film touches on the incongruity of his being sentenced to a jail term more than twice that of the executives responsible for crimes many times the order of magnitude in size and impact, but the reaction it seems to expect from us is a “what do you expect” rather than any sense of outrage. Once again, those who steal a small amount from hundreds of millions of people receive nominal consequences while those who steal a substantial sum from one place take the fall. Economists estimated that the cost to American citizens of one price-fixing case involving electrical equipment in 1961 was greater than all of the robberies of that year. The cost of the ADM price-fixing, based on the explicit view that “the customers are the enemy,” is incalculable. This film perpetuates the lack of understanding about these crimes in favor of cheap shots at the life-shattering impact of the investigation and the enabling, even exploitive behavior of the law enforcement officials who used him and then left him to deal with the consequences. Worst of all, it leaves us with a feeling of smug superiority when it should be illuminating the kind of thinking from both corporate and government officials that led us to the current financial collapse.

Actress Glenn Close interviewed writer/director/voice actor Bob Peterson of Pixar about “Up” and especially about dogs, the dogs in his life and the dogs on screen. Peterson provided the voice for the adorable Dug, one of the most popular characters in the movie.

I wrote Dug as a combination of all the dogs I’ve owned. Marcella, Precious, Rosy, and Ava are all in there. The distractibility of Dug (SQUIRREL!!) is based on a game I’d play with my dogs. On a hot day the dogs would be panting to cool themselves down. So, I’d jump in and pant along with them. Then I’d stop abruptly and pretend I’d seen something important. The dogs would do the same and go to attention along with me. Long pause. Then, everyone back to panting. It was hilarious. Also I’ve noticed that dogs have an amazing capacity to give love immediately to people that they meet for the first time. Hence the line “I have just met you and I love you.” Dug says this to our old man character, Carl, when they first meet. It’s a challenge to Carl accept his new “family” who loves him and needs his attention.

And check out Entertainment Weekly’s list of the top 50 dogs in movies and television, in honor of the Westminster dog show.

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