As Hurt put it: “To whip up a people into such belief and hysteria that they create a genocide is the darkest thing a human being can do. The government has dealt with the issue reluctantly, which has in turn inspired these persecutors to carry on with inhuman acts. Ibuka said it had recorded the murders of ten people in recent weeks by released genocidaires who wanted to stop survivors giving testimony against them.Benoit Kaboyi, the group’s chief executive, said: “Survivors continue to suffer at the hands of the architects of the genocide. But the courts are beset with claims that the system will be unable to cope with the enormous burden of at least 100,000 defendants. Identity cards no longer show the bearer’s tribal caste as they did in 1994.But a survivors advocacy group, Ibuka, claimed yesterday that it had evidence that some of the 23,000 “genocidaires” or genocide perpetrators released last year from Rwanda’s packed prisons have returned to their murderous ways.The genocidaires, who all had to confess to their role in the killing to qualify for release, are due to face justice in the form of the Gacaca trials – a form of traditional village court in which defendants are judged by the community. Especially the young people who have no images of what happened. Our greatest fear is the violence returning for real, not at the cinema.” They are concerns that increasingly play on the minds of Rwandans.Under the rigid rule of President Paul Kagame, the leader of the Tutsi-led army which eventually halted the genocide, the old distinctions of Hutu and Tutsi have been written out of history.

It is good that not only British audiences should be reminded about the genocide in this way but also we Rwandans. At best that is a very violent form of therapy.” The questions go the heart of the way Rwanda is coping with an atrocity as desolating and communal as the genocide.Some argue that in a country where 44 per cent of the population is aged 15 or below and therefore too young to know what took place, the need to reinforce the lessons of what caused the genocide is constant.Florence Kyarera, vice-mayor of Kichukiro, said: “The trauma that Rwandans feel comes from what happened in 1994, not from a film. The decision to show the film to an audience of survivors, with trauma counsellors on hand, drew further concern from aid workers.One senior Rwandan staff member with a charity working with survivors said: “To put someone who may have seen their wife, husband, mother, brother cut down before them in front of images re-enacting that moment is invoking the same terror that they experienced 12 years ago. A group of schoolgirls close to the filming of a scene at the school had to receive treatment for flashbacks suffered at the sound of actors singing the old Interahamwe chants of “Let’s do the work”, signalling an imminent slaughter. By contrast, the Oscar-nominated Hotel Rwanda was made in South Africa.But aid groups have expressed concern about the effects of making Shooting Dogs on the local population, in particular using the buildings of the ETO itself as the set. I think people understand a film is not a documentary.” Indeed, the makers of Shooting Dogs – financed by the film arm of the BBC, the UK Film Council and a German production company – have been eager to emphasise what they consider to be its key virtue – the fact it was made in Rwanda with Rwandans actors and crew and as much input from Rwandans as possible. All that broke the silence in the giant national stadium, turned into an open-air cinema for one deluged night, was the muted sobbing of people revisiting private nightmares.Shooting Dogs recreates in grim detail the militia roadblocks where Tutsi women were kept to be gang raped, their leg tendons slashed so they could not escape; it shows the murder of a mother and her infant while UN troops look on; and the conversion of Francois, the character of the ETO caretaker, from an untroubled Rwandan into a hate-filled Hutu who kills his friends and neighbours.Patience Myanagenge, 25, one of the extras attending the premiere, who lost a sister in the genocide, said such imagery will always have a ring of truth for Rwandans.She said: “What an outsider sees in this film is a woman you don’t know being killed But to us it is our mother, daughter, sister You don’t shout and scream Such a thing is normal for Rwandans It does not disappear because you cry It is the basic truth of what occurred.

There is always an essential compromise to ensure that the film does its job. In this case, it was telling the story of Rwandans and their unimaginable trauma Everybody on this film sought to achieve that. My hope is that a film like this helps them to own the trauma rather than let it dominate them.”They are sentiments with which others in the audience of the premiere – devoid of red carpets, limousines or crowds eager to catch a glimpse of celebrities – seemed to agree At the ending of the 100-minute film there was no applause. After a number of hours, they were slaughtered.Michael Caton Jones, the film’s Glaswegian director, confirmed that financial constraints on the low-budget project meant the Nyanza-Rebero massacre had had to be recreated at the school.But he insisted that the necessities of dramatic licence – such as creating the composite characters of Father Christopher and Joe – did not tarnish the integrity of the film.The director, whose credits range from Scandal to Basic Instinct 2, said: “Film can only be a dramatic re-enactment.