by SARAH ROWLAND

In 1994 Peter Raymont was like most North American TV viewers. For him, the occasional news footage of Africans being slaughtered like meat cutlets simply meant he had time for a bathroom break before O.J. tried on the glove.

"Yes, I'm embarrassed to say that I was one of many who missed the Rwandan genocide when the Simpson trial took over the airwaves," says Raymont. He's the director of Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire, a doc that follows the emotionally shattered Canadian Lt.-General back to Rwanda for the 10th anniversary of the machete massacre, where Hutu hard-liners set out to annihilate Hutu moderates and Tutsi civilians. "Actually the General did a bit of research on this and discovered that the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan incident received more minutes of coverage in the United States during those 100 days when nearly 800,000 people were killed."

Peacekeeping gone wrong

Once the body count was tallied up, however, Raymont turned his focus to making a movie about Dallaire's experience as the commander of what was supposed to be a simple UN peacekeeping mission. But the General was in no shape to relive the nightmare. He was in the throes of a full-on nervous breakdown that landed him in the headlines and then the hospital. Seven years after the carnage, though, Dallaire was strong enough to write his memoirs.

"It's an extraordinary book," Raymont says. "I think it's because he wears his heart on his sleeve and the emotion just pours out. He's very visual in his writing, as when he describes those horrific stories of people being cut up and ‘babies being chopped up like sausages.' I mean nobody had spoken like that before."

It's also an extraordinary movie. From the first scene, as the plane touches down in Africa, it's clear that Dallaire himself isn't sure if the two-week reunion is going to be a cathartic step toward healing or the final blow to his mental well-being. This is something that Raymont was mindful of throughout filming, but never more so than when he and his crew followed the General to the morgue where 10 UN Belgian soldiers had been killed and piled up like a bunch of "potato sacks." A glazed Dallaire drifts off mid-sentence and completely freezes like he's slipping away - beyond the reach of his daily cocktail of anti-depressants.

"When he walked away from that scene and the whole time we were driving him back, he was dead silent, which is very unusual," says Raymont. "He likes to talk. He especially likes to talk to me. For the two weeks we were there, it seemed like we were constantly conversing. So I was very concerned for him."

Anniversary aftermath

Raymont's not alone. In the film, various journalists, genocide survivors and family members express concern that the General will never recover from his guilt. This despite the fact the he was given the choice to pull out and abandon the country, but instead chose to stay and risk his life to save thousands of others while the rest of the world turned their back on the "dark continent." But the term "hero" seems to be of little solace for a man who can still see, smell and hear the dead when he's alone with his thoughts.

Ironically though, after they finished shooting, it was Raymont who had the meltdown. "I was really kind of a basket case when I came back from Rwanda," says the hardened filmmaker who's spent more than 25 years making docs that expose crimes against humanity. "I don't quite know why. Maybe it was being inside Dallaire's head for so long or the repetition of horror in the cutting room. Whatever it was, for a few weeks there I couldn't make decisions. I just couldn't do anything. I guess I was in some sort of shock myself."

The director's cut of Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire opens at Cinéma du Parc, Friday, Feb. 11

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