John Hurt says Rwanda genocide film is a `wake-up call'

KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) _ A British-German film on the 1994 Rwandan genocide focuses on the moral lessons of what happened in the country more than a decade ago, one of its stars said. <br/><br/>``It's

Monday, March 27th 2006, 1:37 pm

By: News On 6

KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) _ A British-German film on the 1994 Rwandan genocide focuses on the moral lessons of what happened in the country more than a decade ago, one of its stars said.

``It's a wake-up call ... to the fact that the world is not made up of goodies and baddies but of people who can be twisted and bent in all kinds of shapes,'' British actor John Hurt told reporters in Kigali.

Hurt plays a priest who runs a school that is caught up in the violence in Michael Caton-Jones' ``Shooting Dogs.'' The film was to premiere Monday night at the capital's main sports stadium, which itself was the scene of the slaughter of hundreds of Rwandans.

``Shooting Dogs'' depicts the first six days of the genocide as it happened at a high school.

Students of the Ecole Technique Officielle who survived the genocide were invited to attend the premiere. Some of those survivors appeared as extras in the movie, which was shot documentary-style in Rwanda.

In 100 days, extremist Hutu officials and militias killed at least 500,000 ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.