Kayije Kagame

Kayije Kagame (born 1987) is a Rwandan–Swiss contemporary artist and actress.

Kayije Kagame
Born1987 (age 35–36)
Geneva, Switzerland
Occupations
  • Actress
  • artist

Life and career

Kagame was born into a Rwandan family in Geneva in 1987.[1][2] Her father, Faustin, is a prominent political journalist and advisor to President of Rwanda Paul Kagame (no relation); her mother is a teacher of history and French.[2][3] One of her siblings is filmmaker Shyaka Kagame.[2] Kayije became interested in acting at age 19 when she ran into director Raffaele Curi in Rome and he offered her a role in a play.[3][4] She studied theater at the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève for a year, then in 2010 enrolled in the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre (ENSATT) in Lyon.[2][3] In 2014, she attended a summer training program in New York hosted by theater director Robert Wilson, who cast her that year in his revival of Les Nègres at the Odéon in Paris.[3][5]

In art, Kagame has made short films, sound installations, and other installations and performance pieces.[1][6] In 2019, with other artists, Kagame staged So Long Lives This, and This Gives Life to Thee, a piece that took up every part of the building of the Théâtre de l'Usine in Geneva.[1][7] The same year, Kagame and actress Grace Seri toured with Sans Grace/Avec Grace, a two-part performance piece.[1][4] In 2022, she and filmmaker Hugo Radi began touring Intérieur Vie/Intérieur Nuit, a similar work that is half staged and half filmed.[8][9]

In Alice Diop's Saint Omer (2022), Kagame made her feature film debut playing Rama, a pregnant writer observing a woman (played by Guslagie Malanda) on trial for killing her own one-year-old daughter.[10][11] Kagame's character has a real-life analogue in Diop, who attended the trial the film is based on.[12] A. O. Scott of The New York Times complimented Kagame's "seething, quiet performance", and IndieWire praised her "effortless elegance".[13][14] Kagame was chosen as one of the Révélations at the 48th César Awards, and European Film Promotion (EFP) named her one of 2023's Shooting Stars.[15]


References
  1. "Kayije Kagame". lespressesdureel.com. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  2. "Sans Grace / Avec Grace" (PDF). Grütopie 20–22 (in French). August 2020. p. 5. Archived (PDF) from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  3. Boisselet, Pierre (14 November 2014). "Rwanda: Kayije Kagame, l'innocence et la vertu" [Rwanda: Kayije Kagame, innocence and virtue]. Jeune Afrique (in French). Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  4. "Kayije Kagame: 'Etre une femme noire est une double force'" [Kayije Kagame: 'Being a black woman is a double strength'] (in French). Radio Télévision Suisse. 23 September 2020. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  5. Cappelle, Laura (6 October 2014). "Les Nègres, Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, Paris – review". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  6. "Saint Omer press kit" (PDF). medias.unifrance.org. Unifrance. p. 16. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 March 2023. Retrieved 1 March 2023.
  7. "Kayije Kagame" (in French). Théâtre de l'Usine. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  8. Stanic, Ana. "Kayije Kagame • Actress". cineuropa.org (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 1 March 2023. Retrieved 1 March 2023.
  9. "Intérieur vie, Intérieur nuit de Kayije Kagame". sceneweb.fr (in French). 6 February 2023. Archived from the original on 1 March 2023. Retrieved 1 March 2023.
  10. Zuckerman, Esther (16 January 2023). "For the Documentarian Alice Diop, Only Fiction Could Do Justice to a Tragedy". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  11. Roxborough, Scott (14 December 2022). "Meet the 2023 European Shooting Stars". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  12. Brody, Richard (13 January 2023). "'Saint Omer', Reviewed: A Harrowing Trial Inspires a Complex, Brilliant Film". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 2 March 2023. Retrieved 1 March 2023.
  13. Scott, A. O. (12 January 2023). "'Saint Omer' Review: The Trials of Motherhood". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  14. Monks Kaufman, Sophie (7 September 2022). "'Saint Omer' Review: Alice Diop Reorients a Horrifying True Crime in Her First Narrative Outing". IndieWire. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 26 February 2023.
  15. "Kayije Kagame, Switzerland". efp-online.com. European Film Promotion. Archived from the original on 1 March 2023. Retrieved 1 March 2023.
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