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Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire (2005)
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Reviews Counted:47
Fresh:43
Rotten:4
Average Rating:7.6/10
Consensus: A gut-wrenching documentary about the man in charge of the UN peace keeping force during the 1994 Rwanda genocide of 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus.
Theatrical Release:May 18, 2005 Limited
Synopsis: In 100 days - between April 6 and July 16, 1994 - an estimated 800,000 men, women and children were brutally killed in the obscure African country of Rwanda. The victims - many horrifically hacked... In 100 days - between April 6 and July 16, 1994 - an estimated 800,000 men, women and children were brutally killed in the obscure African country of Rwanda. The victims - many horrifically hacked to death with machetes - were Tutsi, and moderate Hutus who supported them. One man was tasked by the United Nations with ensuring that peace was maintained in Rwanda - Canadian Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire. But unsupported by U.N. headquarters and its Security Council far away in New York, Dallaire and his handful of soldiers were incapable of stopping the genocide. After ten years of mental torture, reliving the horrors daily and more than once attempting suicide, Roméo Dallaire has poured out his soul in an extraordinary book. Shake Hands With The Devil is a cri de coeur. The General pulls no punches in his condemnation of top UN officials, expedient Belgian policy makers and senior members of the Clinton administration who chose to do nothing as Dallaire pleaded for reinforcements and revised rules of engagement. Dallaire is convinced that, with a few thousand more troops and a mandate to act pre-emptively, he could have stopped the killings. His impotence, at a time of extreme crisis, preys on his conscience still. The experienced Canadian documentary production company, White Pine Pictures, secured the documentary rights to General Dallaire’s book and exclusive access to follow him during his first return trip to Rwanda, in April 2004 - the 10th anniversary of the genocide. We were there as he revisited the killing fields that haunt him. Shake Hands With The Devil is the most powerful documentary produced about the Rwandan genocide. Unflinching. Gut-wrenching. Challenging. Hard-hitting. This is appointment television for viewers throughout the world who care about human rights and international justice. -- © White Pine Pictures [More]
Starring: Romeo Dallaire
Starring: Romeo Dallaire
Director: Peter Raymont
Director: Peter Raymont
Producer: Peter Raymont, Lindalee Tracy
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Reviews for Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Romeo...
[Dallaire] makes for a fascinating focal point ... a fundamentally decent man, cursed with a horribly total recall. He can't stop seeing it.
Poses an essential question: How can you shame an international community that, even now, seems constitutionally incapable of it?
Gut-wrenching, incredibly moving, and informative about a man who still suffers and a country that still mourns.
A personalized, historically charged travelogue that speaks to a massive tragedy's impact on one man.
Raymont's film, with Dallaire as the main voice and news footage from 1994, lays out a compelling, compact story.
This wonderful, devastating documentary is as much Dallaire's story as it is the story of a whole continent abandoned by a cynical world.
Through it all is Dallaire himself, a woeful, pitiable figure, the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy. He had only the noblest intentions and was thwarted.
A fascinating account of its subject's self-torture over his inability to stop one of the 20th century's greatest tragedies.
A searing indictment of the tragedy that occurs when good men choose to do nothing, and a portrait of a man who deserves respect for having tried to confront evil head-on.
Like Dallaire's bestselling autobiography, which provides the movie's basis, the film is part therapeutic personal exorcism and part passionate humanitarian indictment.
Dellaire's final bit of self-abuse is to blame himself for his failure to shame the world to action.
A tragic reminder of how that overused epithet, 'Never again', makes hypocrites of us all.
The result is at once a document of destruction (via narration and newsreel footage), an indictment of the world community, and a testimony to the resilience of those abandoned people.
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