Directed by Michael Caton-Jones

Unlike last year's Hotel Rwanda this harrowing account of the Rwanda genocide of 1994 filters the events through a white European perspective, with all the strengths and shortcomings that approach entails. It is centred on events at the Ecole Technique Officielle, a high school in Kigali centred on a catholic mission, where we meet Father Christopher (John Hurt), and young idealistic teacher Joe, Hugh Dancy, who are to be the eyes and consciences through which we witness the dreadful events to come. The school has a mix of Hutu and Tutsi pupils, and an idyllic first 10 minutes shows an apparently carefree unpressured life there which could pass as a recruitment film for VSO. But almost overnight things change, and soon the school is full of Tutsi fleeing their Hutu neighbours, who surround the school in increasing numbers armed with guns and machetes.

Meanwhile on the roads around Hutu militia and locals man roadblocks to pick out and slaughter Tutsi, and bodies lay unburied and mutilated. For a while the 2,500 people in the school are kept safe by the presence of Belgian UN peace monitors, but inevitably, they will be left unprotected and most will be killed.

Based on memoirs by David Belton, who was working for the BBC in Rwanda at the time, it's to a great extent a cry of anger, at the inaction of the UN, and at the lack of concern of the world. There's also guilt there - the guilt of the European civilians who left, knowing that staying could have done nothing to help, but guilty all the same. The film becomes increasingly harrowing as more and more inhuman acts take place, all shown with a matter-of- fact-ness and clear-eyed lack of sentimentality that makes it all the harder to watch.

The fact that we see all this through a white European gaze provides a way into emotional engagement with the facts, a benefit perhaps, but it does have its drawbacks. Because there are practically no fully drawn African characters the drama does to a great extent centre on Joe and Father Christopher's feelings, their actions, and our concern for their survival. And while Hugh Dancy's youth and bright eyed idealism are sympathetic, I certainly found John Hurt's flawless saintliness almost too much to take, as is his seemingly necessary presence in every dramatic moment - even the poor woman giving birth doesn't seem able to push hard enough until he makes an appearance. This ultimately eurocentric concern with white protagonists is also responsible for the misjudged final sequence where we are returned to the peaceful green fields of an English public school - apparently the alma mater of the saintly Father Christopher, but also presumably the kind of place which provided a launch pad for more than one coloniser in the past who is partly responsible for the state Africa is now in, or for the bureaucrats who can split hairs between ‘genocide' and ‘acts of genocide'.

When Hotel Rwanda was made in South Africa there was apparently a feeling in Rwanda that a film about the genocide should be made there, where it happened. As we have seen since the film opened, this was not altogether without problems, and there are some disquieting questions in one's mind while watching. We are told that a sort of cordon sanitaire was drawn around the filming location, so its sights and sounds would not upset people living in the area, but who were the extras, and did they include both Hutus and Tutsi ? Did re-enacting one's terrible part in the events, on whichever side, in front of the camera, help, or reawaken nightmares or even feelings of revenge? After the credits we see pictures of members of the crew and cast who were there in 1994 and a resume of their experiences, perhaps the most moving part of the film.

Despite these reservations, it is clearly a film made with passion and sincerity, and a moving addition to the canon of work about the genocide. One of its strengths is that it reawakens a curiosity about and desire to understand the long-term political situation which led to the slaughter (and also what happened afterwards). Another thing to ponder as one leaves the cinema is how it is that so many apparently good people could be turned so easily into murderers. How does the protective human impulse to look after one's own get corrupted into both genocide on the large scale, and the regretful admission on the part of Nicola Walker's BBC journalist that she is more moved by the sight of murdered Europeans who ‘could be her Gran' than of Africans. Perhaps one day we might have a film about that.