New Film About Rwandan Genocide Women 30% Funded on Kickstarter

A.BrownGirlFilms announces the official launch of its Kickstarter campaign to obtain independent funding for the feature film, TREES OF PEACE. Inside the first week, the campaign was 30% funded. This unprecedented narrative film centers on four women trapped and hiding in an UNDERGROUND compartment during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Helmed by an African American woman director and performed by an ensemble cast of exclusively female leads-three of them being African characters-the movie has groundbreaking potential for a white-male-dominated marketplace. Its $65,000 funding goal will cover costs for production to begin in late spring of 2017.

Considering Rwanda has the highest percentage of women in government in the world, independent filmmaker and director Alanna Brown plans to portray the genocide through an entirely different lens than ever seen before. TREES OF PEACE is an intimate look at the origin story of these heroic women, visible in the featured proof-of-concept trailer.

"Yes, there were men on the streets committing unspeakable atrocities," Brown commented, "But what about the women whose homes, husbands, and children were ripped away? The women who went into hiding and fought their own wars? The women who would later rebuild Rwanda? What about them?"

In addition to its celebration of women and its significance for female filmmakers of color, the movie carries a timely message of resilience and unity regarding civil war, genocide, and political unrest.

Revolutionary in its vision-conceptually similar to films like ROOM, GRAVITY, and BURIED-almost the entire narrative will take place in one small UNDERGROUND compartment, creating an intimate and claustrophobic exploration of the human spirit. The script for TREES OF PEACE, also written by Brown, was a 2014 winner of the prominent Launch Pad Features Competition. The Kickstarter campaign will run for 30 days total, ending on February 15th.