Shooting Dogs

Rwanda 1994, and an idealistic young teacher (Hugh Dancy) and a didactic older priest (John Hurt, quite magnificent) are caught in the middle of the genocide perpetrated on the Tutsi people by the Hutu, where the pair must face stark choices between duty and personal safety as civil war implodes around the supposed sanctuary of their school compound. Filmed at the actual locations where the events took place, 'Shooting Dogs' is a raw, honest and devastating account of the most monumental atrocity in recent African history, as well as a scathing indictment of the inadequacy and ineffectiveness of the United Nations, whose refusal to intervene over a point of semantics resulted in a tally of eight-hundred thousand dead Rwandans. [Paul Greenwood]