This movie is based on real events in Rwanda in 1994 and made on location, that is: on the grounds of the Ecole Technique, a missionary school in Kigula. On the schoolgrounds also stayed a Belgian UN-force under command of Charles Delon. In six days, from April the fifth till the eleventh, the story is unfold about the massacre of 2500 Tutsis who found shelter there. Survivors helped to produce this movie, for them it might have been a way to digest a little bit of the enormous pain. Between April en July 1994 800.000 Tutsis were killed.
The movie starts friendly with Joe, a young English teacher, who is busy with a runnning contest between his pupils, who visits the parents of schoolgardener Francois, but doesn’t like the bananabeer and talks with his class about God. The English priest Christopher listens in the doorway and asks the beautiful and smart Marie about the meaning of Easter.
Not much later they hear about the plane crash in which the Hutu president Habyarimana died. The Hutu’s blaim the Tutsis for the accident and start chasing them. The Tutsis find shelter in the school. Gardener Francois, a Hutu, fears that the Tutsis want to take over power and overrule the Hutu’s.
Joe wants to talk with Christopher about wood for the stove for making food for everyone, but Christopher has to do the mass, he says, so Joe gives them his own bed and bookshelves. Joe wants the bishop to come to the school, but Cristopher says they passed that stage already. Joe brings a female reporter in from BBC-television instead. They go to find Francois to help them as an interpreter but he is not at home. Later on Joe discoveres that Francois is in the interahamwe, the Hutu militia with their machetes. On their way home they film murdered Tutsis. The BBC-woman asks Delon why he doesn’t interfere. Delon answers that he has no mandate. The compound gets surrounded by and under siege of the Hutu’s more and more.
Christopher helps a woman to give birth and hears that all inhabitants of the monastery have been murdered. He wants to go there but Joe doesn’t like that. When the baby needs medicine, Christopher has to go anyway. On his way he visits the monastery and is shocked by what he sees. When he is back, Delon suggests to shoot the dogs outside the school because they are eating dead Tutsis. Christopher is desillusioned. He even doesnot mind if they use the bibles for making fires for a stove.
After the baptism of the baby, the French come in with only two trucks to rescue the French. Later on they agree to take also the other Europeans with them. The BBC woman leaves and askes Joe to come too but he stays. At the same time a group of Tutsis tries to escape in the bushes but they are slaughtered, also the baby and its mother,
Christopher wants them to pack their bags. Marie comes in and askes Joe to stay. Delon has got orders to withdraw to the airport. Christopher gives the people a last communion. Marie sees that Joe is leaving. Joe says he is sorry. Maries father askes Delon to kill them all, rather by guns that by machetes. Delon cannot help him, he says. Christopher stays in the school to be able to save his heart and soul. He brings some Tutsis, under whom Marie, hidden under a cover in the back of his truck out of town. At the same time the Hutu’s slaughter the Tutsis. At a roadblock the Hutu’s make Christopher stop. They kill him while Marie and the others escape in the woods. We see televisionpictures of an English UN woman functionary who doesnot want to speak about genocide in Rwanda.
Five years later Joe leads a choir in a school in Engeland and Marie shows up. She thinks sacrifies is an ultimate act of love and asks Joe why he left them. Joe admits that he was afraid to die. They conclude to use their time in life well.
This movie reminded me of the murdering in Screbrenica, one year later. The situation was quite identical, except that the Dutch left the compound after the Bosnians males had been transported by buses. They also had to deal with the inability of the international community. Like the Belgians in Rwanda the Dutch took their hands of the moslim population. It still is a big scar in our national history. Last week the judge condemded the Dutch state for being responsible to send three male Bosnians away from the compound.
After watching the movie, I read in the news that a Hutu-man who got asylum in Holland, is put lifelong in prison because of taking part in the murdering in 1994.
Here is a part in French with Delon, Marie en Joe in the chaos on the schoolgrounds:
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