Release date: 3rd September
Running time: 90 mins approx
RRP: £19.99
Cert: 18
“Outstanding… A gripping and moving film”
The Guardian
AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME ON DVD
In 1994, word began to spread around the globe of an incomprehensible tragedy unfolding in the small African nation of Rwanda. In a period of just 100 days, the country’s Hutu extremists had executed more than 800,000 Tutsis with ruthless efficiency. Genocide had once again blighted the world.
Shake Hands With The Devil recounts this unconscionable series of events through the eyes Canadian Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire, the man tasked by the United Nations Security Council with maintaining peace in the beautiful, yet volatile, nation.
Valiantly leading ill-equipped, untrained troops who did not want to be there and desperately pleading each worsening day with the UN for reinforcements and revised rules of engagement, Dellaire was rendered powerless by his superiors in New York. The inevitable failure of the peacekeeping mission haunts him to this day. The mental anguish of reliving of the horrors he witnessed more than once drove him to attempt to end his own life.
Following Dellaire’s emotional journey, 10 years later, back to Rwanda, the film is an resolute and gut-wrenching indictment of a UN administration that had the opportunity to stop the killing, yet let it play out with devastating consequences.
Lieutenant General Romeo Dellaire’s story must be told and its lessons must be learned.
