When BBC journalist David Belton went to Rwanda on assignment in 1994, he didn’t realize the impact that the country’s widespread genocide would have on him, especially long term.  Just 25 at the time, Belton understood that he would be facing death – even, perhaps, his own.  What he didn’t comprehend was that he would be staring into the face of evil.

“The Rwandan genocide was different from others,” Belton wrote last year, in an essay for The Guardian.  “There were no walled ghettoes, no trains discreetly shuttling victims off to a cold, gas-induced death. No epic forced marches away from cities and towns to the privacy of a rice paddy. In Rwanda, genocide was everywhere. Ordinary people, civilians, rose up against their neighbours and, sometimes, their own families. Occasionally they got their hands on guns or grenades but usually the killing was done with machetes, knives and clubs. People were killed in houses and back gardens, at beer stalls, bakeries and churches; along the corridors of municipal buildings, hospitals and schools.”

Belton saw some of those murders.  One happened next to his vehicle at a roadblock, in fact.  While the journalists looked on, a man was hacked to death with machetes.

“They were quite prepared to kill people in front of us,” he said, speaking recently from his home in London.  “It felt like there were no rules.  They didn’t care of the media was watching or not.”

Years after the killings had ended, and long after Belton had returned home, he found himself still reliving the trauma.  As a result, he began to write and produce Beyond the Gates.  Filmed on location in Rwanda with numerous genocide survivors serving as cast and crew, the feature film tells the story of some 2,500 Tutsi citizens and sympathizers who take refuge inside a private school in Kigali, along with United Nations peacekeeping troops, schoolchildren and workers.  When the UN troops withdraw five days later, the Rwandans are slaughtered by the Hutu militia. 

The film’s plot is fiction, but it was largely inspired by events surrounding a Bosnian priest named Vjeko Curic.  Curic, who was eventually killed as well, sheltered Belton and his team while they were in Rwanda.  The priest also shared that he had been ferrying Tutsis out of the country in the bottom of his truck.

Released last year in the United Kingdom under the title Shooting Dogs, Beyond the Gates stars John Hurt (Midnight Express, The Elephant Man), Hugh Dancy (Black Hawk Down, King Arthur) and newcomer Claire-Hope Ashitey (Children of Men).  It was chosen as the official selection at the Toronto Film Festival, the London Film Festival and the Human Rights Watch Film Festival and received the prestigious Truly Movie Picture Award at last year’s Heartland Film Festival.