Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire

Colour, 35 mm
Canada, 2004, 90 min
Section: Focus on Canadian Films

Synopsis

Ten years after the genocide in Rwanda, a film crew headed up by Canadian documentarist Peter Raymont travelled to Africa, to the scenes of the massacre. They accompanied retired General Roméo Dallaire, who ‘failed’ in his mission as head of the United Nations peacekeeping force. Given the lack of assistance, he was absolutely powerless to avert the catastrophe – and the world passively looked on. During 100 days of massacre in 1994, some 800,000 people perished in clashes between two opposing ethnic groups during which extremist Hutus murdered Tutsis. Shaken, Dallaire took on the burden of guilt for the brutal mass murder, losing all inner calm forever (he suffers from insomnia and twice tried to commit suicide). Years later he returns to the places visited by the horror. The film combines archive shots from the massacre with footage of contemporary Rwanda.

About the director

Peter Raymont is a Canadian documentarist with more than 100 films to his credit who subscribes to John Grierson’s definition of a documentary as “the creative treatment of actuality.” While in Rwanda shooting the documentary Rwanda: In Search of Hope (1999), he first began thinking about a film on Dallaire, who at the time was suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. Raymont’s films bear witness to inhuman conditions and war violence all around the world, including two documentaries on the war in Nicaragua: The World Is Watching (1988) and The World Stopped Watching (2003).