Kayije Kagame
Born1987 (age 36–37)
Geneva, Switzerland
Occupations
  • Actress
  • artist

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

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. 1 2 3 4 "Kayije Kagame". lespressesdureel.com. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "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. 1 2 3 4 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. 1 2 "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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