Interview with David Belton

At age 23, David Belton received a job that would be any journalist’s dream. He began working for BBC’s current affairs program Newsnight, which he would later produce and direct for six years. During that time, Belton covered a wealth of world events, such as the eviction of Margaret Thatcher, the war in Bosnia, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet in 1994, Belton covered an event that shook him to his very core. During a 100-day period in Rwanda, an estimated 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered. It wouldn’t be until eight years later that Belton would decide to write a film about the genocide.

Beyond the Gates, produced and co-written by Belton, focuses on a Catholic priest and English teacher who find themselves caught up in the impending genocide. Both men must decide whether to flee for safety, or stay with the doomed Rwandans. The film stars John Hurt and Hugh Dancy, was directed by Michael Caton-Jones, and opened in Chicago last Friday. The Chronicle had the honor to speak with David Belton about his extraordinary experience in Rwanda, as well as the film it inspired.

The Chronicle: Describe your experience covering the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
David Belton: It was very unlike anything I’ve done before. I’d seen quite a lot of conflict by then, some in Africa, some in Europe, but I’ve never witnessed that. And it wasn’t just the bodies. I’ve sometimes described it as kind of a moral vacuum. It was as if the whole moral attitude of the country had been sucked out. People were literally walking around doing stuff which the day before was really bad and now was really good, and vica versa. So it was kind of moral inversion going on, sort of a 180 degree, and that as a 26-year-old was quite frightening. There was nothing to grip onto. It was morally slippery. You couldn’t get a foothold on this rock-face.

Were the characters in Beyond the Gates based on people you encountered while covering the genocide?
The part of Father Christopher played by John Hurt was not based so much as inspired by a real priest I knew out there. He was a creation priest named Vjeko Curic. He was one of two priests who stayed throughout the genocide, and he sheltered us when we were there. So he was an extraordinary man, and I felt personally inspired by him and humbled really. What was it that gave him the strength to brave the road blocks day in and day out? It was a burning ideologically spiritual plain that he had that. He was a very magnetic, charismatic character, and in a sense that was an inspiration for the part. Where are the limit of your courage, where is the depth of your faith, and where does it exist? On that continuum, where do you sit? I thought that was sort of an interesting character point from which we could build. [These priests must deal] with a country that day by day gets poorer instead of richer. That’s something people in this country or in the United Kingdom have no understanding of.

Why was the film’s original title Shooting Dogs?
We loved the title because it absolutely summed up the internal hypocrisy of what happened with the west and our relationship with Africa, and in particular Rwanda. We colonized the place, and then we abandoned it, and it’s typified in a UN soldier saying ‘the only thing we can do is shoot dogs.’ From that scene came the title. The reason we changed it was because it’s a tough title, and though it worked pretty well in Rwanda and the UK, we wanted to try to make this film have a broader base and to bring people in. It’s tough to get people into a film about genocide.

Describe the screening for Beyond the Gates that was held in Rwanda.
I was there at the Rwanda screening having a hernia trying to get it all done. It rained five hours, and it swamped the stadium, the screen collapsed, [and] the electricity exploded. We knew it wasn’t going to happen. There were 3,000 people shivering under the stands, and we just thought this was a disaster. If there is a god, [this proved it.] The electricity started up and the screen lifted. We played [the film] for an hour and fifty minutes and there wasn’t one malfunction. There were tears pouring down my face. It was a very moving experience. Rwandans were blown away and very upset by it. They found it traumatic, and they were pleased that [the film was] part of their cultural history. That’s what the Rwandan minister [Joseph Habineza] said after the screening. We felt that this was what it’s all about. If we can get audiences here in Chicago, great, but that was the mother-load.

What message do you want audiences to take away from this film?
Don’t believe politicians when they tell you stuff because they’re probably not telling you the truth. They certainly didn’t tell the truth in ‘94 in America, and they didn’t in Britain either. Both our governments actively conspired to reduce the US force in Rwanda, so John Major and Bill Clinton have a lot to answer for. I think healthy, rational skepticism of our political leaders is really important. One of the messages of this film is that we’re all much closer to each other than we realize. If that is the case, and I do believe it is, look at the cultural exchange that goes on now, what with the Internet and blogging. When I was a student twenty years ago, we just had pen pals. Now we have dialogue every day with some guy in Tangier. We are really living in a much closer world now, and there’s really no excuse now.