(2005) Around the dirt track of Ecole Technique Officielle in Kigali, Rwanda, Marie Mutogoma (Clare-Hope Ashitey) runs as Joe Connor (Hugh Dancy), her British teacher, urges her on. It's early April 1994 as Father Christopher (John Hurt) prepares for Easter Mass. The school's compound also serves as a base of operations for the Belgian UN blue helmets under the command of Capt Charles Delon (Dominique Horwitz).

Off the school grounds, Joe hears from Rachel Watson (Nichola Walker), a reporter for BBC-TV, of Hutus attacking Tutsis with machetes during a peace rally. When Joe asks, Marie translates slurs directed at her: Hutus call Tutsis cockroaches. François Nikuze (David Gyasi), a groundskeeper at ETO, defends his people: "Hutus must protect themselves or die."

When Rwanda's president is killed in a plane crash, Tutsis are blamed; father Christopher fears a coup. Hundreds of Tutsis plead from outside the gates to be let in for protection as Hutus go house to house in the capital killing. While Capt Delon says he has orders not to allow the school to become a safe haven - his rules of engagement forbid use of weapons except for self-defense, his mandate being to monitor the peace, not enforce it - Father Christopher, scoffing at such diplomatic distinctions, opens the compound to the refugees.

A Tutsi former government minister reminds Capt Delon of what the Nazis did to the Jews; later the Belgian officer tells the priest of being proud of his grandparents' saving Jews from the SS. Joe, who came to Rwanda as an idealistic young man wanting to make a difference, promises Marie that she will be safe with her father Roland on the compound.

Filmed on the actual site where these events originally took place, Michael Caton-Jones directed David Wolstencroft's screenplay from a story by Richard Alwyn and David Belton of a few thousand of victims in the gruesome genocide during which 800,000 people were slaughtered over 100 days.

With the idea that if the world could see what is happening, Joe brings Rachel and her cameraman Mark into the compound; on their way to the school, stopped and threatened at a road block manned by the Hutu militia (among whom is François, holding a bloody machete), they witness Tutsis being hacked to death.

When news reaches Capt Delon of the butchering of ten kidnapped Belgian UN soldiers, he acknowledges, "No one's safety can be guaranteed now," and makes a comparison with US soldiers killed in Somalia. Interviewing an uncomfortable Capt Delon, repeatedly noting his weak mandate, Rachel presses him on the UN's obligation to intervene during a genocide. Comparing what she had seen and felt in Bosnia with this, aware of her callousness, Rachel says to Joe: "Over here they're just dead Africans."

In the hell outside the gates, dogs feed on the corpses; but when Capt Delon asks Father Christopher to alert the people that his men will shoot the canines, the priest sarcastically turns on the Belgian, demanding to know if the animals had fired upon the UN soldiers - if hygiene is his concern, the primary cause of the disease is obvious. Running dry of hope, he collects Bibles to be burned when the firewood has been depleted.

French Legionnaires arrive only to evacuate whites. Rachel urges Joe to join her in the truck: "There is nothing more you can do here." He replies: "I'm staying."

Marie asks Father Christopher if God really loves everyone, even the murderers beyond the gates. Father Christopher's answer to theodicy, the question of how God (if he's still here) can allow the suffering of innocents, is that God is right here in the midst of the misery.

Declaring "I have been given no choice" after receiving orders to withdraw to the airport, Capt Delon then refuses Roland's plea to have his men turn their guns on the Tutsis rather than abandon them to the Hutu's machetes. "Go in peace," says Father Christopher, who chooses to remain with his congregation, ironically concluding a final communion. "You promised," Marie reminds Joe, who futilely replies: "I'm sorry." Marie runs for her life.

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