Beyond the Gates
IFC Films, 2007

Based on true events and filmed in Rwanda with genocide survivors as cast and crew, BEYOND THE GATES tells their shared story of humanity in the most inhumane circumstances.

In April 1994, a secondary school in Kigali, Rwanda called the Ecole Technique Officielle (ETO), being used as a UN army base, became a refugee camp.  Belgian UN troops, school children, NGO workers and over 2,500 Tutsi citizens and their sympathizers took refuge against a raging genocide while the Hutu militia, clad with machetes, clamored outside the school gates.

Five days later, the UN troops withdrew from the school, taking the whites with them. Within hours, almost all of the Rwandans were dead.

BEYOND THE GATES is about the choices we make when we are free to choose.  In the tragic circumstances of the Ecole Technique Officielle, would you have left with the UN troops on the fifth day or would you have stayed?

Directed by Michael Caton-Jones and starring John Hurt, Hugh Dancy and Clare-Hope Ashitey, BEYOND THE GATES was co-produced by David Belton, Pippa Cross and Jens Meurer. Belton who also co-wrote the original story was a former BBC Newsnight correspondent stationed in Rwanda during the genocide.