Shooting Dogs
( Shooting Dogs )
- Director: Michael Caton-Jones
- Screenplay: David Wolstencroft
- Dir. of Photography: Ivan Strasburg
- Music: Dario Marianelli
- Designer: Astrid Sieben
- Editor: Christian Lonk
- Producer: David Belton, Pippa Cross, Jens Meurer
- Production: CrossDay Productions
- Sales: Cross Day Productions
Cast
John Hurt, Hugh Dancy, Dominique Horwitz, Louis Manohey, Nicola Walker
Synopsis
Following the films
100 Days (2001, dir. Nick Hughes), screened at Karlovy Vary in 2002, and the highly successful
Hotel Rwanda (2005, dir. by Terry George), this is another dramatic film dealing with the appalling genocide in Rwanda in 1994, when 800,000 people, mainly of the Tutsi tribe, were murdered over a hundred days. Better known as a director of commercial titles, Michael Caton-Jones has made a film from one episode in the tragedy. It takes place in a church school near the capital Kigali between the 5th and 11th of April 1994. The main protagonists are white, the young teacher Joe Conner and the old priest Christopher. They are trying to save the Rwandans who have been fleeing to the school, which is supposedly under the protection of a UN Belgian unit. The film is based on real events described by journalists who were in Rwanda at the time. It was shot in real locations, and local people whose families suffered in the massacres worked on the film as cast and crew. The characters, however, are fictitious.
About the director
Michael Caton-Jones (1957, Broxburn, Lothian, Scotland) started out in London in the theatre. On the basis of his amateur films he won a place at the National Film School and later worked for the television station Channel 4. He first made a name for himself with
Scandal (1989), a reconstruction of the Profumo Affair. At the beginning of the nineties he moved to Hollywood, where he has made films in a range of genres: the war film
Memphis Belle (1990), the romantic comedy
Doc Hollywood (1991), a true-life drama
This Boy’s Life (1993), the historical drama set in the early 18th century
Rob Roy (1995), a remake of the famous thriller
The Day of the Jackal (1997), the crime movie
City by the Sea (2001),
Shooting Dogs (2005), and the delayed sequel to the legendary erotic thriller
Basic Instinct 2 (2006).
