Kayije Kagame | |
---|---|
Born | 1987 (age 36–37) Geneva, Switzerland |
Occupations |
|
Kayije Kagame (born 1987) is a Rwandan–Swiss contemporary artist and actress.
Kagame was born into a Rwandan family in Geneva in 1987.[1][2] Her father, Faustin, is a prominent political journalist and advisor to President of Rwanda Paul Kagame (no relation); her mother is a teacher of history and French.[2][3] One of her siblings is filmmaker Shyaka Kagame.[2] Kayije became interested in acting at age 19 when she ran into director Raffaele Curi in Rome and he offered her a role in a play.[3][4] She studied theater at the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève for a year, then in 2010 enrolled in the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre (ENSATT) in Lyon.[2][3] In 2014, she attended a summer training program in New York hosted by theater director Robert Wilson, who cast her that year in his revival of Les Nègres at the Odéon in Paris.[3][5]
In art, Kagame has made short films, sound installations, and other installations and performance pieces.[1][6] In 2019, with other artists, Kagame staged So Long Lives This, and This Gives Life to Thee, a piece that took up every part of the building of the Théâtre de l'Usine in Geneva.[1][7] The same year, Kagame and actress Grace Seri toured with Sans Grace/Avec Grace, a two-part performance piece.[1][4] In 2022, she and filmmaker Hugo Radi began touring Intérieur Vie/Intérieur Nuit, a similar work that is half staged and half filmed.[8][9]
In Alice Diop's Saint Omer (2022), Kagame made her feature film debut playing Rama, a pregnant writer observing a woman (played by Guslagie Malanda) on trial for killing her own one-year-old daughter.[10][11] Kagame's character has a real-life analogue in Diop, who attended the trial the film is based on.[12] A. O. Scott of The New York Times complimented Kagame's "seething, quiet performance", and IndieWire praised her "effortless elegance".[13][14] Kagame was chosen as one of the Révélations at the 48th César Awards, and European Film Promotion (EFP) named her one of 2023's Shooting Stars.[15]