Kayije Kagame

Kayije Kagame (born 1987) is a Rwandan–Swiss contemporary artist and actress.

Life and career

Kagame was born into a Rwandan family in Geneva in 1987. One of her siblings is filmmaker Shyaka Kagame. Kayije became interested in acting at age 19 when she ran into director in Rome and he offered her a role in a play.

In art, Kagame has made short films, sound installations, and other installations and performance pieces. 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 in Geneva. The same year, Kagame and actress Grace Seri toured with Sans Grace/Avec Grace, a two-part performance piece. In 2022, she and filmmaker Hugo Radi began touring Intérieur Vie/Intérieur Nuit, a similar work that is half staged and half filmed.

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. Kagame's character has a real-life analogue in Diop, who attended the trial the film is based on. A. O. Scott of The New York Times complimented Kagame's "seething, quiet performance", and IndieWire praised her "effortless elegance". 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.