Beyond The Gates
Based on true events and filmed in Rwanda with genocide survivors as cast and crew, Beyond The Gates (a movie) 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?
This is a powerful movie. One of the main characters, when faced with the choice of fleeing to safety or staying for an almost certain death, turns to another character and says, “You asked me where God is in the midst of all this suffering. The answer is right here. I can’t ever remember feeling God’s love so profoundly. My heart and soul are here. I feel like if I left, I would never find them again.”
His decision and actions are so Christ like - very inspirational.
