By CHRISTIE THOMPSON

Last night, I took an impromptu trip into the city (with my lovely GES co-chair) to catch what I could of the Chicago International Film Festival. I’m kicking myself for not going earlier, because the lineup this year was truly staggering – I think I heard over 145 films from 45 countries!

We were lucky enough to catch “My Neighbor, My Killer,” a documentary on the Rwandan Genocide. The film focuses on the Gacaca tribunals, a justice system in which citizen-judges try their own neighbors for crimes committed during the 1994 genocide. The set-up alone is disarmingly casual –prosecutors and defendants sit on the grass, speaking for themselves in front of a card-table of judges. No one is cuffed or restrained, before or after their sentencing.

The entire movie brought up several questions that we continued discussing long after we left the theater. At the end of the film, you watch as a woman who’s children were slaughtered by a man who was once her neighbor, announce that she has forgiven him and the judges should as well. They accept the appeal, and a man who killed so many is allowed to return home and rebuild his life.

I don’t think I was the only one left with incredibly mixed emotions. The woman, Felicite’s, capacity for forgiveness is astonishing, and some might say, commendable. It makes me wonder if the concept of an International Criminal Court is necessarily the best option. Are we merely imposing western concepts of punishment and justice on a culture built on forgiveness? Simultaneously, it was difficult and upsetting to see someone who has caused such insurmountable pain, as seen when the victims of these crimes discuss the loss of their children, go without repercussion. But what I consider to be the necessary process of justice may shift given the extenuating circumstances of Rwanda. How do you rebuild a nation with half of your citizens incarcerated? The question remains with the Rwandan people to find the fastest path to healing. It’s a question all of us GES-ers are asking too, finding ways to use social change and entrepreneurship to help this process of rebuilding.