After the Rehearsal
Nested in a mythological setup with an absent director, an unruly fictional character, a ghost and a wanderer, five actors share stories about a speculative future in which all international organisations have left Burundi and the East-African region. Their stories drift between report, fairy-tale and gossip, highlighting the increasingly elusive state of the world around them, and have been developed in the course of 5 years of research, exchange and collaboration between the Burundian filmmaker F. Munyana and the German filmmaker P. Fröhlich.
synopsis
Five actors meet for a rehearsal, which is also supposed to be a spirit summoning, in
the garden of a colonial-era villa in Bujumbura. The main character of the theatre
play, who is fictional and should not really have a will of his own, defies the director
and prevents the play from finding an end. Together with the director, the actors are
supposed to conjure up this fictional character and talk sense into him. When
the director fails to show up for rehearsal, the actors begin sharing stories to pass the
time. In five long monologues, in which the narrator’s "I" increasingly eludes clear
classification through various levels of quotation, they tell stories that directly or
indirectly touch on the everyday life of so-called development cooperation and its
architecture of privilege.
The stories drift from the documentary-anecdotal to the metaphysical and fairytale-like. Finally, without any conjuring, the ghost of the main character appears,
remaining invisible to the film camera and contributing not a resolution but only
another anecdote. And as the actors leave the garden, they suddenly encounter incarnations of the fairy-tale characters from their
stories – at least according to a voice-over that guides us through the film as a rather unreliable narrator.
Burundi/Germany. 2026. 68min. French, Kirundi. picture-lock / in postproduction.
background
"After the Rehearsal” looks at the the West from the outside. From a place where its actions have great impact, where its nature
reveals itself with greater clarity, and where one might see what cannot be seen from
within - maybe even its future, if one turns Aimé Cesaire's idea of the colonial boomerang
on its head.
The project began in 2019 as a long-distance dialogue between the Burundian filmmaker
F. Munyana and the German filmmaker P. Fröhlich—a shared attempt to understand a development cooperation
system that claims to fight inequality, while allowing it to persist by masking its origins. Following the idea that "the view from the castle is part of its walls" the film looks at what those walls are made of.
Our point of entry was Burundi—a former German, then Belgian colony,
a country the IMF listed poorest in the world, affected by NGO dependence and extreme
climate vulnerability. In this context, we tried to trace how aid structures can both sustain
livelihoods and alleviate immediate suffering, while silencing critique, stabilizing inequality
by giving as charity what people deserve by right, and helping conceal the far greater
extraction of wealth in past and present.
Over five years of conversations, research, encounters and failed attempts, a script
emerged. It grew out of stories we collected, people we met, friendships that formed,
and out of the transformations our relation went through. It maps not only what we
learned, but also our doubts and fears, the structural limitations we encountered, and the
lasting gap that inequality creates. Having started as an attempt to describe a system,
the focus shifted to describing the mechanisms of storytelling that shield that system and
allow it to endure.
The structure of the film mirrors a ceaseless unearthing of ever growing narratives. In the
first part of the film, two absent characters embody the tensions between ideology,
power, and resistance, creating a frame of contradiction. Their blockage summons the possibility
of a form of reason informed by things we do not understand. The second
part of the film is composed of five monologues that approach everyday life within the aid
economy with fragility, humour, and caution, while rising inflation, economic precarity and
the shadow of Eastern Congo seem to haunt the otherwise everyday stories delivered by
the characters. The narratives conceal as their tissue gets denser, but details accumulate, hinting at the
extractive logics beneath the benevolence.
In the meantime, the rising waters of lake Tanganyika are closing in.
And - in another time and space, a speculative future where all international organisations have left East Africa—a ghostly wanderer navigates the ruins of the old aid
narratives. Projections of Western values, constructed through their counter-images, and, it seems, discarded after ceasing to be the most economically feasible way to legitimise an empire.
a note on recent developments:
The inital documentary approach of collecting stories was translated into an experimental fiction to accommodate certain questions: The question how we can talk about a topic that has been talked about so much while inequality remains and grows. The question how to acknowledge our own complementing yet contradicting positions and the mythologies and narratives we carry, who will unavoidably permeate the film. And the problem of accomodating structural limitations - questions of access and permission, representational ethics, and also limitations of funding that make a classic documentary or narrative form difficult. During the short shooting period and after, a cruel version of this fiction seemed to be coming true. The new US administration abruptly slashed humanitarian and development aid, which will cost many lives and affect many livelihoods, and other donors like the European Union cut large chunks of funding. This seems to represent a paradigm shift that is in the process of being normalised in international relations, where tediously cultivated narratives are suddenly discarded in favour of a more blunt approach to power.
short synopsis
Five actors are gathering to rehearse a theatre piece about a future in which all
international organizations and NGOs have left East Africa. But, as the director herself
does not appear, they cannot do anything but wait, and share a few stories. Nested in a
mythological setup with an absent director, an unruly fictional character, a ghost and a
wanderer, they tell stories about the sphere of international development aid and the
inequality it claims to fight.
The monologues drift between report, fairy-tale and gossip, drawing the image of an
increasingly elusive reality, and dealing with the ghosts of representation, the colonial
structures of development cooperation and a possible end of it. The script was developed
out of stories, ideas and experiences gathered in five years of artistic research and
exchange between F. Munyana and P. Fröhlich.
short statement
Started as a long distance collaboration, "After the Rehearsal”
grew out of 5 years of exchange, research and encounters between the German filmmaker P. Fröhlich and the Burundian filmmaker
F. Munyana. In the context of Burundi’s colonial past, NGO dependence and
climate vulnerability, we tried to trace how aid structures sustain livelihoods and alleviate
immediate suffering, while allowing the inequality to persist by masking its origins.
In the film, two absent characters create a frame of contradiction. They embody the
ghostly tensions between ideology, power, and resistance, while five monologues weave
mythologies around the everyday aspects of the aid economy. In the meantime, the
exterior reality seeps in through the cracks. Blending fiction and documentary, the film
explores rather than the aid system itself, the mechanisms of storytelling that
shield it and allow it to endure.
credits
based on ideas and conversations had,
research done,
stories collected,
experiences lived
and scenes written
by
F. Munyana + P. Fröhlich
2019 – 2025
directed by
P. Fröhlich
with the support, contributions and guidance of many friends:
very very special thanks for your help, friendship and warmth
Ado Bouboule Masho
Winny Arielle Bruno
Deniz Mónica Ivan Eszter
Star Nathi Tahira
and the ensemble
V.C. AKAMBA
C.A. ARAKAZANDORUWANKA
C. MUNYENGABE
P. NDAYISHIMIYE
R. YERA
J. NSTINZI
El Malove MWARIMU
S. RUGORI
production
D. KANEZA
A. ISHAKA
camera
R. MALIKONGE + P. FRÖHLICH
light design
R. MALIKONGE
montage
P. FRÖHLICH
lamp operator
B. MBONYINGINGO
sound
Krazzi Bright
studio engineer + additional sound
A.H. MIKOBI
sound studios
KAKEL Studios
costume design
L. AKIMANA
set design
M. BIYENYIMANA
F.D. SAIDI
J. RUHANGAMURA
paintings
A-key
music
"mipango sio matimizi"
by Vivy MUYOMBA + Linah BLANCHE
with kind permission of Vivy MUYOMBA + Linah BLANCHE
"trio sonata no. 5 in c major, bwv 529: largo in a minor"
by J.S. Bach
interpretation: John Butt
with kind permission of PIAS
blues guitar
Maxine Maxine
phone song
Wardah ASSADULLAH
additional music
P. FRÖHLICH
Krazzi Bright
translations
W. INAMAHORO
F. MUNYANA
D. KANEZA
advice, support + help
B.S.K. DUSHIME
A. ISHAKA
L. HAZAMASHO
D. ŞIMŞEK
M. MARTINS NUNES
I. MARKOVIĆ
E. GALAMBOS
B. REMESHA
A. KANEZA
logistics
B. NTIBURUMUNSI
I. BIGIRIMANA
R. KHOJA
P. MUHIMPUNDU
locations
T. HANIF + Z. HASHIM
G. DAOU
T. TERRYN
B. REMESHA
V. MUYOMBA
L. KASSEM
casting advice
J. NKURUNZIZA
A. BAN
L. SETUKURU
F. SABIMBONA
color grading
I. MARKOVIĆ
sound design
S. SHEN
sound mix
J. JEZUSSEK
VFX
C. AMADO SOARES
