Trees of Peace

Trees of Peace (2021) is a drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Alanna Brown. Rwanda, spring 1994. Four women crowd into a cramped cellar and wait out the killing happening just above them.

A pregnant homeowner shelters three strangers: a nun, a grieving neighbor, and an American volunteer caught in the wrong country at the worst time. Outside, men with machetes work from lists while the radio urges them on. Inside, there is hunger, the terror of a single cough giving them away, and weeks of darkness. Eliane Umuhire, Charmaine Bingwa, Ella Cannon, and Bola Koleosho play women bound not by friendship but by the same pit none of them can leave.

Brown draws on survivor accounts from the genocide against the Tutsi and keeps her camera inside those four walls for nearly the whole runtime, which is exactly where the dread and the strength come from. This isn't a history lecture; it's a test of what holds when everything else is stripped away. Hard to sit through, honest, and worth it for anyone ready for serious cinema. Stream Trees of Peace (2021) online on iFILM.