Shooting Dogs

Aroview: Based on events during the horrific genocide of close to one million Rwandans, this sincere yet insufficiently told docudrama centres on the selfless actions of a Catholic priest (Hurt) and a teacher (Dancy) who provided refuge to thousands of Tutsis trying to escape certain death.

Despite a chillingly evocative recreation of the extremely volatile atmosphere under which events took place, the film takes a decidedly Anglo-centric approach, with the ‘heroism’ of the priest played up at the expense of empirical Rwandan accounts. Blame is placed squarely at the feet of the UN and not the media (unsurprisingly, for a BBC-funded film); a shame, since the true story of one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century deserves to be told with dignity and due cinematic justice.