Three films in two years
about Rwanda's genocide have shocked Western audiences with the scale and savagery of
the slaughter, but many survivors are unimpressed.
People pay their
respects in front of dozens of coffins containing the remains of more than
600 victims of the 1994 genocide, during a commemoration in Kigali, Rwanda
April 7, 2006. Three films in two years about Rwanda's genocide have
shocked Western audiences with the scale and savagery of the slaughter,
but many survivors in the tiny central African nation are unimpressed with
the big-screen's wrong depictions of the carnage. Picture taken April 7,
2006. [Reuters] |
They say the big-screen depictions of the carnage, when about 800,000
minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were butchered in 100 days of state-sponsored
killings, have got the story wrong.
"My conclusion was that both movies are another Hollywood fiction geared at
making money," said Jean Pierre Rucogoza, a 47-year-old university lecturer and
genocide survivor who has watched "Sometimes in April" and "Hotel Rwanda."
Rucogoza lost 11 relatives in the killings. In an interview on the eve of the
12th anniversary of the genocide earlier this month, he said he believed the
films partly represented the West's conscience rearing its head too late.
"But, unfortunately, they are also being used as a money-minting tool," he
told Reuters. Many who lived through Rwanda's bloodshed say they are happy the
films remind the world of the tragedy, but say the reality was different.
"'Sometimes in April' is characterized by very serious inaccuracies and
omissions which made most survivors say 'it is not our story'," said Francois
Ngarambe, president of a Rwandan genocide survivors' association.
Directed by Raoul Peck, "Sometimes in April" tells of the plight of a Hutu
soldier who is separated from his Tutsi wife and two children as violence
engulfs the capital Kigali in April 1994.
Ten years later, he learns of their deaths from his brother, who was a
presenter on a hate radio station urging the killers on, and is now facing an
international trial.
Ngarambe said the film wrongly portrayed the genocide as largely the work of
militia, neglecting the careful planning by the Hutu extremists in the
government and the military.
The latest screen take on the genocide, and the only to be filmed on
location, Michael Caton-Jones's "Shooting Dogs," had its world premiere at a
stadium in Kigali last month.
It was filmed at the Ecole Technique Officielle, a school in the capital
where Belgian U.N. troops abandoned more than 2,000 Tutsis to be slaughtered by
machete-wielding killers.
It has also been criticized by some survivors, particularly for one scene
where a white Roman Catholic priest decides to stay with the refugees, rather
than be evacuated along with his expatriate colleagues.
Many senior church leaders were complicit in some of Rwanda's killings and
the depiction angered many who already blame the United Nations and Western
powers for failing to intervene.
"There was never a situation, not at that school or anywhere, where a white
person refused to be evacuated. That is a pure lie," said Wilson Gabo, a
coordinator of Rwanda's Survivors Fund charity.
The makers concede a degree of artistic license with the facts of what
actually happened at the school, risking inflaming tempers in a society where
memories are still raw.
Amid international inaction, the genocide was finally ended by Rwanda's
President Paul Kagame, who led a rebel army from Uganda to seize power. He has
recently joined the film debate, sharply criticizing the Oscar-nominated "Hotel
Rwanda."
Released last year, Terry George's movie stars Don Cheadle as Paul
Rusesabagina, the Hutu manager of a Kigali hotel where more than 1,200 people
survived the killings taking place outside.
Kagame, a Tutsi, said the South African-filmed portrayal of Rusesabagina was
a "falsehood," and he would not have picked him as a symbol of heroism in those
tragic times.
"Some of the things actually attributed to this person are not true," Kagame
told reporters last week. "Even those that are true do not merit the level of
highlight."