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Synopsis (from the Seville Pictures website)
Shake Hands with the Devil
is the story of a Canadian soldier torn
between his duty and his conscience. In 1994, the United Nations
dispatched LGen. Roméo
Dallaire to far-off Rwanda to enforce a difficult peace. The peace
treaty between the rebels, led by the minority ethnic group, the Tutsi,
and the French-supported government made up of the majority group, the
Hutu, is on shaky ground. The day LGen. Dallaire orders the UN
flag raised six little girls are massacred in the countryside in what
appears to be the work of the rebels. Chaos ensues.
Given neither the tools nor the power to do the job he was entrusted
with, LGen. Dallaire takes charge of the situation as best he can.
Launching investigations into the massacres and designating the capital
a weapons-free zone, he whips his small, ill-provisioned force of
international peacekeepers into the best shape he can. But while
trying to take decisive action to preserve the peace, he is undercut by
his own superiors, who have their own political interests to protect.
Powerless to prevent the country descending into hell,
LGen. Dallaire is ordered home. He disobeys. he insists on
staying and saving those that he can from the genocide, while futilely
doing everything possible to stop it. When the Belgian troops pull
out after ten of their soldiers are killed, he can do nothing but stand
by and watch as his best-equipped troops leave. When New York
cancels the peace mission entirely, he knows his only chance for help
lies with the media covering the civil war. Promising journalists
a story every day if they will stay, LGen. Dallaire attempts to shame
the international community into action.
In the end, he saves some 30,000 people, but 800,000 have died in the
span of only a hundred days. What he was able to do seems to him
all too little. He leaves a broken man - but a man we deeply
respect.
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