Kayije Kagame

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][4] Kayije became interested in acting at age 19 when she ran into director Raffaele Curi [it] in Rome and he offered her a role in a play.^[3][5] 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 [fr] (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][6]

In art, Kagame has made short films, sound installations, and other installations and performance pieces.^[1][7] 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 [fr] in Geneva.^[1][8] The same year, Kagame and actress Grace Seri toured with Sans Grace/Avec Grace, a two-part performance piece.^[1][5] In 2022, she and filmmaker Hugo Radi began touring Intérieur Vie/Intérieur Nuit, a similar work that is half staged and half filmed.^[9][10]

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.^[11][12] Kagame's character has a real-life analogue in Diop, who attended the trial the film is based on.^[13] A. O. Scott of The New York Times complimented Kagame's "seething, quiet performance", and IndieWire praised her "effortless elegance".^[14][15] 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.^[16]