Africa, Headlines, Human Rights

FILM-RWANDA: Portrait of Genocide Probes Idealism and Faith

Hawa Allan

NEW YORK, Jul 24 2006 (IPS) - From “Schindler’s List” to “Hotel Rwanda”, popular films that depict individual responses to state-sanctioned terror often spotlight the extraordinary courage of selfless heroes.

Certainly, the stories of how Oskar Schindler bribed and deceived Nazi agents to spare the lives of Jewish workers and how Paul Rusesabagina sheltered more than 1,000 Rwandans in his luxury hotel during the 1994 genocide are worthy of dramatic representations that stir and inspire a mass audience.

However, such portrayals tend to rouse more righteous self-affirmation than solemn soul-searching among viewers. Considering the Rwandan genocide or the Holocaust of World War II from the perspectives of Rusesabagina and Schindler, respectively, film audiences can lazily identify with the men’s remarkable acts of courage without squarely facing the question of whether we ourselves would have had the guts to oppose the Nazi regime or a machete-wielding militia.

“Shooting Dogs”, a new feature film set in a Rwandan Catholic school during the early days of the genocide, does not spare audiences this searching inquiry. Captured mainly from the viewpoints of two British settlers – an idealistic young teacher and a world-weary priest – the film’s central tension is not borne from how, but rather how long, the main characters will stand by as thousands of Rwandans take refuge in their secondary school amid the maelstrom of civil war.

The school, Ecole Technique Officielle (ETO) in Kigali, is also home to a unit of Belgian U.N. soldiers, who reluctantly take in local Rwandans fleeing from violence and guard the area against surrounding militia. Hemmed in by murderous mobs, the ETO’s sole protectors are zealously disinterested U.N. troops whose prime concern is to strictly follow their mandate to monitor, not enforce, peace.

Abiding by the rule to shoot only if shot at, the troops patrol the ETO perimeter with guns poised as they “monitor” one small group of Rwandans, only yards away, who are descended upon by machetes when they make a desperate attempt to escape the school’s uncertain haven for safer territory. By contrast, the U.N. Captain Delon (Dominique Horwitz) does not hesitate in another scene to order his inferiors to shoot dogs feeding on dead bodies near school boundaries.

Given such circumstances, neither the seasoned and wise Father Christopher (John Hurt) nor the green yet well-intentioned Joe Connor (Hugh Dancy) are dependable figures in which to invest our hero-worship. This is not for their lack of effort. When each character sets off alone beyond the gates of the school onto dusty roads in a creaky, white pick-up truck – Joe to search for his favorite student, Marie (Clare-Hope Ashitey), or summon BBC reporters, Father Christopher to pick up medicine for a sick infant housed at the school – one’s stomach cannot help but tighten in anticipation of what fate might await them.

When both men, outside the zone of U.N. protection, are faced with the brutal violence meted out by Hutu militia against Tutsi civilians and sympathisers, it becomes clear that neither their status as Europeans nor their affiliation with the church will shield them from harm.

In the opening scenes, Joe offers banal reassurance to BBC journalist Rachel (Nicola Walker) who had witnessed hostilities at a peace rally, telling her: “I guess Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Later in the film, after a dreadful encounter at a military cordon, he mocks his guilelessness, confiding in Rachel that he sometimes feels like a self-congratulatory star in his very own Oxfam commercial.

Father Christopher, meanwhile, returns to the school after having viewed the harrowing aftermath of brutality at his church. He later responds to Marie’s request for more fuel for the bonfires by offering her the school’s bibles.

As idealism wanes and faith is strenuously tested, the audience is perpetually unsure of the characters’ willingness to choose solidarity over flight. Moreover, as it becomes increasingly clear that solidarity is tantamount to certain death, one can appreciate the wrenching ethical turmoil that such a decision entails.

Inspired by the experiences of film producer and former BBC journalist David Belton, “Shooting Dogs” by Michael Caton-Jones is essentially about Western responses to the Rwandan genocide. The British film, which has yet to gain U.S. distributorship, is tailored to engage varied Western audiences – from those wholly unacquainted with Rwanda to the most ardent Africanists. Through Joe, we learn basic facts about the conflict. Through Father Christopher, we get a more textured account.

For instance, Joe drives through his first military roadblock with the school groundsman, Francois (David Gyasi). Early in the film, Joe fiddles and jokes around with Francois’ identification card, completely ignorant of the underlying ethnic tensions that could expose them to harm if Francois were unable to prove his Hutu status to the inspecting soldier. After the conflict starts, Joe interrupts Marie in mid-translation of a Tutsi woman’s story to ask her what “interahamwe” means. “Militias, they are gangs of militia,” Marie answers.

Father Christopher, for his part, is a welcome foil to Joe’s naïf, as he balances optimism of the will with sober pessimism of the mind. In response to Joe’s persistent suggestion that Father Christopher call upon a bishop to come to the school and give an uplifting sermon, the priest, exasperated, exclaims: “We’re past all that!”

Ultimately, with its Western bent, “Shooting Dogs” is about choice. The choice to leave, to stay, to intervene, or do nothing. Joe and Father Christopher, the U.N. and the BBC, they all have such choices – choices that are entirely unavailable to the Rwandans seeking shelter at the school.

Both Joe and Father Christopher have leeway to leave the school and take their chances with military cordons, knowing that they will hardly be taken for Tutsis or Hutu moderates. When a convoy of French legionnaires bundles onto the school grounds to whisk away white expatriates, Rwandans who attempt to climb into the trucks are pried and pushed off the vehicles. Even Joe’s gallant offer to give Marie his own spot on the airport-destined trucks is brusquely denied by the French troops.

Based on the true story of a priest-run school in Kigali that also housed Belgian U.N. troops, “Shooting Dogs” pulses on the hope that its fictionalised characters will not abandon the school. At the real ETO, the U.N. left the school defenseless five days after the genocide began. About 2,500 of the Rwandans stranded there were slaughtered. History has recorded that the international community stood still while an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were massacred in 100 days. “Shooting Dogs” is a reckoning with this mournful past.

In English and Kinyarwandan, the 115-minute film has English subtitles. It was a selection in the Human Rights Watch Film Festival of 2006.