Cannes Film Festival attendees are no longer the only ones privileged to see a critically-acclaimed film made by YWAMer Isaac Chung. Munyurangabo, which depicts two children coming to terms with post-genocide Rwanda in 1994, is being released in U.S. theatres in May.

Chung was an unlikely candidate for a Cannes Film Festival placement in 2007 as he was an unknown filmmaker who had only recently graduated from the University of Utah film school. Chung shot the film in 11 days during the summer of 2006 while on a missions trip to teach a course in filmmaking and photography at a YWAM center in Kigali. He shot the film with former university classmate Jenny Lund and screenwriter Samuel Anderson. The 15 YWAM students served as the film’s crew.

Chung developed a unique hand-held camera style and relied on a form of improvisation in his child actors to great effect. Film critic Robert Koehler of Variety magazine noted in his Munyurangabo review after the 2007 Cannes Film Festival that “the sheer confidence and artistic will that 28-year-old Chung exercises… can’t be overstated.” Casting at-risk kids who attended a YWAM-sponsored soccer camp lent an authenticity to Chung’s story. Munyurangabo is the first feature-length film made in Kinyarwanda, Rwanda’s primary language, which Chung doesn’t speak.

The story centers on two boys, from the once-embattled Hutu and Tutsi tribes, who forge a relationship in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The Tutsi, Munyurangabo (Jeff Rutagengwa), wants to kill the Hutu soldier who murdered his father, and goes on the journey with his only friend, Sangwa (Eric Dorunkundiye). But on the way, they stop in Sangwa's Hutu village, which he fled years earlier. Sangwa's disapproving father is suspicious of Munyurangabo because he fears Tutsi retaliation for the mass killings perpetrated by Hutu factions during the genocide.

Chung and his team plan to donate proceeds from the film to YWAM and other
organizations for scholarships and development.

Kevin Hanson, Chung’s professor in the University of Utah’s film department, noted in 2007 that Chung’s filmmaking skills rapidly matured while making Munyurangabo. “He really loves making films,” Hanson said, “not just the idea of making them.”