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The thing about French enormities is not that the French lack the imagination to commit them. They lack the honesty to face them.

FRENCH DISTRIBUTORS SHUN ROMEO DALLAIRE FILM

KIGALI September 26, 2007 (AllAfrica/RNA) - Oscar-winning Canadian producer Michael Donovan is bitter with French distributors for ignoring his movie, 'Shake Hands With the Devil', because it criticizes France for encouraging the 1994 Genocide, RNA has established.

The movie is based on Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, the memoires of Roméo Dallaire,* Force Commander of the hapless UNAMIR during the Rwandan genocide.

Mr. Donovan told The Hollywood Reporter last week that he has had offers from a host of territories internationally, but "dead silence" from France. Mr. Donovan:

Here, a great crime has been committed on behalf of the French people by its government and soldiers, and it's understandable that it might be hard for the citizens of France to acknowledge and reflect upon that. But I think the country must reflect and it will be a great shame if they are denied the possibility of seeing this film.

... Mr. Donovan says French critics lavished praise on an earlier film he produced - 'Bowling for Columbine', when it was released at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and heaped criticism on the U.S. and its gun culture. Mr. Donovan:

That film was hugely popular in France. It was also popular in the U.S., which shows the Americans have a capacity for self-examination. But here we have a film critical of France and, interestingly, the French distributors are showing no interest in that.

We are reminded that the film The Battle of Algiers was banned in France until 1971. Events associated with the loss of Algieria, to this day, exceed most French philosophes' capacity for self-examination.

Now American horrors in Iraq, that's the sort of thing a nation of philosophes can wrap its imagination around.

For more on France's complicity in the genocide see our posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

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* Co-authored by Samantha Power, whose Bystanders To Genocide gives a damning account of failed consensus internationalism.

PFFT (What is this?): If America isn't to blame, how important can it be 3½ | Rayonnement français 0