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Film Muser Rating : 4 / 5
Release Date : September 11, 2005
Running Time : 115 minutes
Also Known As : “Beyond the Gates”, “In Every Human Heart”

Shooting Dogs refers to the practice of United Nations troops shooting dogs that were scavenging on the bodies of dead Rwandans during the genocide of 1994. This film is set at a secondary catholic school in the capital of Kigali during the start of the conflict that resulted in the Hutu majority slaughtering nearly a million Tutsi citizens. As the coup becomes a reality, a group of 2500 Tutsi take refuge at the school where a Belgian U.N. peacekeeping platoon is stationed. As the U.N. dances around specific language and phrases to describe the conflict, the mass killings, or “acts of genocide”, as the U.N. liked to say, were happening right outside the school gates. Because their current mandate billed them as “peace time monitors”, the U.N. troops could do nothing to stop what was happening. The film focuses on the catholic priest (played by John Hurt) Christopher, and an idealistic teacher Joe Connor (played by Hugh Dancy) who witness the horrors first hand, but are unable to do anything about it.

Hugh Dancy as Joe Connor in “Shooting Dogs”

This movie is extremely violent and graphic. The filmmakers did not shy away from portraying the acts of barbarism that were taking place in Rwanda during the crisis. As hard as it was to watch these scenes, I am glad that they decided to go in this direction. As much as I liked Hotel Rwanda, the one complaint that I had with it was that it seemed to gloss over the violence that was taking place. As a mainstream movie, it was seen by a lot of people, and I thought it should have been more “in your face”, letting people see what happened there. Shooting Dogs debuted at Cannes in 2005 and was released in Europe shortly after. Only recently did it hit North American theaters, and only in limited release. I fear that most people will think it is just another Hotel Rwanda, and dismiss it. I personally think that this is the one to see.

Even though Joe Connor’s character as the idealistic school teacher is ubiquitous, I believe that it worked out well. As I watched his character I got the sense that he represented what the world should have been feeling, and doing. John Hurt’s performance of Father Christopher is awesome. He starts off as a calm man, dealing with everything as it comes. But as the crisis progresses, he starts to sense the hopelessness of the situation and we start to see a side we usually don’t equate with a priest. The Belgian captain Charles Delon (played by Dominique Horwitz is a conflicted character as he struggles to follow orders from his commanders, despite knowing that they were garbage.

A problem I do have with this film is that we seem to have another African tragedy as told from the perspective of a westerner. I think it would have been more interesting to see this story as told from the perspective of one of the Tutsi. I know that the priest and teacher can be considered heroes, but there were also a lot of Rwandan heroes too that should have their story told. The sad thing is that most people are only interested in the story from the perspective of a westerner - and that is part of the problem. Shooting Dogs definitely makes a statement condemning the rest of the world for letting the genocide occur, and for that reason I think everyone should see it.

Memorable Scene
There is a disturbing scene where Joe Connor is speaking with a BBC journalist while in the schoolyard. She tells Joe that she covered the war in Bosnia and had a real hard time dealing with it. She said she would cry every night, and whenever she would see a dead woman, she would think of her mother. But while in Africa covering the genocide, she said that she didn’t cry once, because all she saw were “dead Africans”. She adds how horrible that sounds, but that she couldn’t help it. I thought that this pretty much summed up what was happening back in New York at the United Nations.