As sad as it is, The 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi provides a script for movie directors looking to tell a story of atrocities. Though the complexity of the matter makes it hard for the movies to do justice to the story, it has not stopped the directors from trying.

One of these films that might not have had a lot of fame but tells a story about Rwanda is Shooting Dogs that features British actor John Hurt.  

Shooting Dogs

The 2005 film seeks to condense and convey something as complex and recent Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, and to reconcile a part-fictionalisation of real events with a documentary style "matter-of-fact” tone, is sure to invite controversy.

 Sponsored by the BBC and shot on a low budget at a school in Kigali, Shooting Dogs ambitiously attempts to distil the key elements of Rwanda’s three month Genocide over a five-day period, when outnumbered and ill-equipped Belgian United Nations peacekeepers, acting on the orders of foreign-based superiors, abandoned Tutsi refugees to the murderous attacks of the extremist Hutu militia. 

Events are largely seen through the eyes of two western Europeans; an Africa-weary Catholic priest played by John Hurt, and a young, idealistic teacher played by Hugh Dancy.

Grey Matter

Rwandans to have not been left behind in telling their own stories as no one knows it better than they do. Grey Matter is one of those films. Set in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, this radiantly self-referential film-within-a-film describes the vision and trials of a determined filmmaker named Balthazar, as he tries to tell about a brother and sister dealing with the aftermath of Genocide.

Grey Matter is a film by the Rwandan director Kivu Ruhorahoza.

Shake Hands with the Devil 

Shake Hands with the Devil, a movie based on Roméo Dallaire’s book, tells a story of when the world turned its back against Rwanda during a time of need. 

The Canadian commander General Dallaire is torn between his duty and his conscience when he finds himself eyewitness to hell on Earth. In 1993, the United Nations dispatches Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire (Roy Dupuis) to far off Rwanda to oversee a fragile cease-fire. 

A brilliant, workaholic officer and charismatic commander, Dallaire encounters the shabby reality of a typical UN peacekeeping operation: under-funded, over bureaucratic, and cobbled together from military units from dozens of countries, each with a slightly different agenda. 

Meanwhile, the peace agreement between the rebels, led by the minority Tutsi ethnic group, and the French-supported government dominated by the Hutu majority group, turns out to rest on shaky ground. When an unknown group shoots down the Rwandan President’s plane, the storm breaks and a secret but long-planned genocidal campaign against the Tutsi minority begins with a night of terror in Kigali. 

A reporter (Deborah Unger) remains in-country and follows General Dellaire as he is forced to deal with far-away superiors and the studied indifference of the world’s great powers while trying to take decisive action to stop the Genocide, in which more than a million Tutsi were killed.

He comes across as humble, moral, eminently good man. He has a soft voice. He has been hardened by the tragedy, but is not bitter. Perhaps he wasn’t forceful enough with the U.N., and certainly he was naive about U.N. procedures and bureaucracy. But that wasn’t his fault: The U.N. assigned him to the job of keeping peace in Rwanda before the massacre began, and the U.N. knew he was inexperienced.

The U.N. also knew what was going on when the killing started, because Dallaire made frequent impassioned, urgent pleas to the council to send reinforcements. Twenty-five hundred troops did come in from many countries – but they were all there only to rescue their own expatriates, offering no help to Dallaire, the U.N. or Rwanda. 

Compiled by Collins Mwai