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Europa: Based on a True Story

Screenings Thurs., July 9, 7 p.m.
a film still of a man on a train
Kivu Ruhorahoza, Europe: Based on a True Story (film still), 2019, courtesy of Kivu Ruhorahoza
When
Thurs., July 9, 2026, 7–10 p.m.
Where
Art Theater
Tickets
Tickets available April 2026

A film by Kivu Ruhorahoza

Kivu Ruhorahoza, an African filmmaker intrigued by Brexit, travels to London to make Europa: Based on a True Story (Rwanda) offering an outsider’s view of Europe’s multiple identity crises. His drama, A Tree Has Fallen, follows Simon, a Nigerian man who returns to London after his sudden disappearance a year ago. Simon visits his former pastor, who warns him against revenge, then says goodbye to Peggy, a lonely elderly British woman he once cared for. Ignoring advice, he resumes an affair with Anna, a British woman, and finally reveals why he vanished: he spent ten years as an undocumented migrant, driven to despair by the UK’s harsh “Hostile Environment” immigration policies under Prime Minister Theresa May. Simon also confronts Anna’s ex-husband Bruce, a failed theatre director resentful of diversity funding… Parallel to this fiction, Kivu films growing political polarization in Britain. But the same infamous “Hostile Environment immigration policy” makes it impossible for him to legally stay in Britain. Forced to leave Britain, Kivu goes to retrieve his passport at the Home Office and Immigration Department and hears one last anguished cry from an asylum seeker next door.

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Carnegie Museum of Art Film Series

The 2026 Carnegie Museum of Art Film Series gathers films that harness the power of visual poetry to honor and celebrate the human spirit under pressure. Across histories marked by colonialism and imperialism, and within the quiet or collective gestures of defiance amid political turmoil, these works illuminate stories of resistance and endurance. The narratives on screen, as well as the stories behind the making of these films, affirm community, interconnectedness, and resistance. Resisting political determinism. Resisting cynicism and moral compromise. Resisting intellectual sloth and civic inaction. Resisting fear. Each film interweaves striking imagery with profound social insight, revealing how individuals and communities navigate oppression, upheaval, and transformation. Through their lyrical language, these films not only document struggle, but also celebrate the resilience, creativity, and hope that continue to surface even in the most challenging circumstances.

For the 2026 Film Series, Kigali-based filmmaker and artist Kivu Ruhorahoza programs 7 monthly screenings in tandem with the 59th Carnegie International, taking as his prompt the exhibition’s approach to expansive ways of being in practice with art, and its support of artists across geographies whose works actively configure social life and collective experiences. Identifying “resistance, community, and interconnectedness” as through lines, Ruhorahoza presents a selection of films that offer pathways through the complexities of histories and contemporary circumstances.