One of the movies based on the Rwandan struggle against genocide dubbed ‘The 600’ will be screened on 5 December at Arent Fox LLP in Washington DC, the country’s embassy in US confirmed Wednesday.
The film is based on real events of military wing’s 3rd battalion of 600 soldiers of the former rebel group and current ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) which was produced by Great Blue Production owned by a renowned Hollywood movie maker Hall .
The 600 movie tells a story of the brave combatants of the former Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) who were trapped behind enemy lines when the 1994 genocide began.
It gives a detailed account of events in Kigali during the 100 days of the genocide against the Tutsi and the role of 600 former rebels of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) who were stationed in the city in stopping the massacres.
The movie runs for 117 minutes while 40 Rwandans worked directly on the film.
It took 18 months of hard work to produce the film according to executive producer Richard Hall.
The producer Hall revealed that the idea of making the film came after he visited the Campaign Against the Genocide museum situated at the Parliament building in Kimihurura, a suburb of Kigali city during his first time in Rwanda, which led to making the documentary 18 months later.
Several Hollywood movies have attempted to capture the 1994 Rwanda genocide, among them Hotel Rwanda (2004), Shooting Dogs (2005), and Sometimes In April (2005).
However, some of these movies have attracted their fair share of criticism, especially from genocide survivors who know better.
An offensive scene in one of these movies entitled ‘Shooting Dogs’ is a particular incident in which a white Roman Catholic priest decides to stay with the refugees instead of being evacuated along with his expatriate colleagues.
Shooting Dogs actually refers to a scene in the film where peacekeepers are not allowed to shoot dogs that are eating corpses because they are told they can only shoot at things that have shot at them first.
CU/as/APA