Gilbert Ndahayo

First Rwandan to be nominated for Sembene Ousmane Prize at ZIFF and the African Movie Academy Awards which a variety of international observers have fondly called "African Oscars. "Two times winner of Best Documentary Feature at Silicon Valley African Film Festival. Recipient of the highest grant for the 2015 Rhode Island State Council on the Art for The Blood of the Chosen, Santa Clara County Commendation and US House of Representatives - Special Congregational Recognition, Certificate of Recognition California Legislature Assembly, The New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist and The Vivian G. Prins Fellowship for Artists at Risk.

Gilbert Ndahayo graduated from the prestigious Columbia University with MFA Film Directing Program (2014). During his studies in New York, he wrote narrative scripts, directed and produced three award-winning documentary features.

Speaking to Deutsche Welle at the 2013 Berlinale Talent Campus, Gilbert Ndahayo announced the making of his trilogy The Rwandan Night (2013), The Rwandan Day and The Rwandan Silence in production. Prior to his graduate studies, Ndahayo worked as film editor for Rwanda Cinema Center. He studied History and English at Kigali Institute of Education.

He also produced the Ugandan segment of the feature documentary Life in a Day (2011) directed by Kevin MacDonald and executive produced by YouTube and Ridley Scott - released at Sundance 2011.

Recipient of Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media, the film was released in 2011 on DVD and is subject of scholarly scrutiny.

Rwanda: Beyond the Deadly Pit (2009) documents on tape the last hour of Ndahayo's parents and 52 members of his immediate family who were massacred during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Rwanda: Beyond the Deadly Pit (2009) features in two Routledge's publications: Contemporary French and Francophone studies, Volume 14, Issue 5, 2010 under the title The Pertinence of Impertinent Storytelling in Gilbert Ndahayo's documentary Rwanda: Beyond the Deadly and AFI Film Readers Documentary Testimonies: Global Archives of suffering in the section of Mediating genocide: producing digital survivor testimony in Rwanda.

Ndahayo was the producer of Flores de Ruanda (2008) which won the 2010 Goya Award winning documentary.

His documentary Behind This Convent (2008) received Verona Award for Best African Film and Signis First Commendation for Best African Documentary at Zanzibar International Film Festival in 2008 and subsequently toured European film festivals and screened at American universities. The Dutch film critic, Frank Witkam, brings out a comparison of Ndahayo's films, "Ndahayo's documentary makes me think of a few number of the best action filmmakers such as Hara Kazuo or, with the best work of Michael Moore. " Ndahayo admits to having watched French New Wave movies when he was a boy.

Gilbert Ndahayo used a napkin to write "Dirty Wine" shotlist on bus from Kigali to Kampala in 2007. He turned "Dirty Wine" into his MFA directing thesis project "The Girl In The Ditch".

Ndahayo's debut narrative short Scars of My Days (2006) aired on French television TV 5 Monde and premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2007 in the presence of an audience that included former US President Bill Clinton, Hollywood celebrities namely Robert DeNiro, Whoopi Goldberg and Everybody Loves Raymond's producer Jane Rosenthal.

He also served as country coordinator and writer for BaobabConnection - an Afro-Dutch Youth Online Magazine, his passion for storytelling drove him to cinema in 2005.

Started out in the 2000s as a writer for an Afro-Dutch magazine and human rights activist at his university.

Holds the golden medal for 100 and 200 meter race since 1987.

Born in a traditional village of Astrida, so named after Queen Astrid of Belgium, southern Rwanda in 1975, Gilbert Ndahayo migrated to New York City in 2008.