Shooting Dogs
By Mal Simons, Blockbuster.co.uk

Shooting Dogs is a moving film telling the true story of the genocide in Rwanda back in 1994. Joe Conner is a gap year student working as a teacher at a Christian school in Rwanda. He strikes up a friendship with a Tutsi girl named Marie and helps her to train as an athlete. Joe’s dreams of a brighter future for Marie are shattered when the ethnic tension between warring tribes the Tutsis and the Hutus, turns into genocide.

Starring John Hurt and Hugh Dancy , this really is an amazing film – telling a story that deserves to be told. British legend John Hurt especially brilliant as a priest, doing his best to keep the Tutsi families away from the marauding Hutus. As the killing escalates, both the Priest and his naive protégé, try to convince the U.N. troops stationed at the school but to no avail, they have to take matters into their own hands to save as many people as possible.

The story of what happened in Rwanda has become pretty well known but knowing and seeing are two separate things and this film does not pull any punches. Mothers, Fathers, children, babies were all slaughtered on that day and the U.N. forces in place at the time did nothing – their mandate said that they couldn’t interfere unless they were fired upon themselves and they abandoned the people to the masses.

Shooting Dogs is a tremendously moving film, one that warrants your attention. A moving experience, made more touching by the fact that this all happened. This deserves to be on your list.

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