RISING FROM ASHES

...is about a biking team in Rwanda. It shows a team trying to makes it’s way to the top. The film shows some of the disasters from the Genocide and a few victims of it. It takes you on the teams races and practices. It shows a lot of the Americans who move there to help make this team happen talking, but they don’t show many of the people who live in Rwanda speak or explain about the Genocide, It seems like they didn’t want to linger on the Genocide.

They did a good job of showing almost all parts of this team and their location. As I said before, they only showed a few scenes about the genocide, and they were not particularly emotional scenes. They also didn’t show scenes about them “discovering” America. The director later said that they did have moments like that when they went shopping, but they decided not to use that in their film. they do a great job showing the training and all their races. It helps emphasize how hard some of the tracks are with the film but it also has people from the team explaining what it was like.

SPOILER ALERT!
One of the scenes that was done very well was when one of the team members named Adrian wins as one of the best mountain bikers in the Olympics. Through the whole movie the narrator talks about the team not only wanting to win for a personal acheivment but as something that gives them national pride, and during the scene I mentioned they definetly show that starting to happen.

Overall I felt this was a good film with a touching story, but it did not have some of the expected content. I give it 3.5 out of 5.