Who would have ever thought that coffee could change the world? Pull an entire country's economy out of disrepair, thousands of people out of poverty and teach people to forgive those who slaughtered their loved ones in cold blood?
In May, Over the Edge Productions returned to central Africa to again visit the remote coffee plantation of Cyimbili in western Rwanda. The first trip, a year and a half prior, was with the initial scouting team that visited this place to see if it was possible to restore it to working conditions. With cameras rolling, we began a story that would change thousands of lives while the people of Cymbili saw white people again for the first time in twenty-five years.
Hope for a Thousand Hills is a documentary about the snowball effect of restoring the Cymbili coffee plantation in western Rwanda; the second largest coffee plantation in the country. It's also about the impact it has on a people and economy struggling from the reconstruction and reconciliation of the 1994 genocide that slaughtered almost a million people. It's the story of a community that is about to change the face of Rwanda by something as simple as coffee, create hope for thousands of families living in poverty, and capture the personal struggles of a people learning to forgive and work alongside the people who, not long ago, tried to exterminate them.
We rolled cameras on this trip to capture a dream coming to life as the first harvest of a now working coffee plantation was being farmed. We also explored the immediate and amazing effects of this project and it's impact the surrounding community.
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