This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

I have no idea why a person would rate this less than 10. It was done very well, well chosen actors and good performances. The story was portrayed very realistically. I was truly connected with the characters and was moved by this story. It is sad that this movie is not that popular when there is so much popular crap going on. This movie shows reality and makes us think about important issues, about us, humans, and the humanity. I read the reviews which were negative and the reasons were too weak. I was thinking how easy it is to make people fear of some group and make them kill others without thinking... Why people don't think deeper, why the mass is so shallow (I have these thoughts whenever I remember Hitler and his "work")... I felt angry with UN soldiers, there can be no justification for them. Why were they there at all?.. And we call ourselves civilized people when these things happen... all the massive wars were not so long ago... and people still fight... use physical force instead of using the brain... sad...

This is a devastating film, which accurately recreates the nightmare of the Rwandan genocide. The bottom line is that one man was a true hero, and that person could have been you or me! The question we should all ask ourselves after watching Beyond The Gates - when is it worth laying down our life for another human being(s)? I have to admit, I only watched the beginning, a few segments in the middle, and the ending. It was too upsetting to watch it from beginning to end. I did, however, have enough motivation to act, and I have written a carefully written letter to someone currently serving in the U.S. Senate to:1. Substantially increase aide to Rwanda.2. Treat political refugees from around the world equally and with same high regard our government has given Cuban refuges 3. Issue a public apology to the people of Rwanda on behalf of the United States for the inappropriate behavior of the Clinton administration during the genocide.4. Advocate for a similar apology from the United Nations for their inappropriate behavior.5. Strengthen United Nation institutions so their cowardly behavior in Rwanda is never repeated again, a situation clearly shown in devastating fashion in "Beyond The Gates." 6. Have the U.S. Department of Education compile age appropriate curriculum to teach specifically about the Rwandan genocide and how governments can work to prevent, or intervene in, future genocides. I believe young people hear about what happened a long time ago, during World War 2, and they develop a false sense of security that an event like the Holocaust has never happened (or will ever happen) again.Even though I'm only one voice crying in the wilderness, I'm glad I had the nerve to hope for a better world!

An alternate title for this movie is "Shooting Dogs", which we begin to understand as the movie goes forward. As bodies of the dead began to mount up, dogs had to be shot to keep them from eating them.This movie covers the same time period in 1994 as the excellent "Hotel Rwanda." During when most of the killing was done, about 800,000 had been killed. This movie covers events where perhaps 2,500 of those were killed.John Hurt is Father Christopher, Catholic priest in a Rwandan technical school for the kids. There is a fence and iron gates around it. When the president is killed by the insurgents, townspeople who fear for their lives head for the school, which already had UN "peace-keeping" troops inside. By order of Christopher, the people were let in.Hugh Dancy is young man Joe Connor who teaches at the school.The story centers upon the survival of these people inside the school grounds, while we see hundreds outside being killed if they did not belong to the correct race. It is a very difficult movie to see, but worth a viewing as a way to stay aware of what can happen around the world.SPOILERS: The UN troops had orders not to shoot unless they were fired upon first. So, even though they witnesses senseless killings, they could do nothing. Eventually military trucks came to take away all the whites, but the native Rwandans were left behind, to be slaughtered. Only very few survived, and some of those participated in making this movie.

I bought this film after seeing Hotel Rwanda, and I thought Hotel Rwanda was shocking.. nothing could have prepared me for seeing this film.It is so well acted, and a credit to the people involved. John Hurt and Hugh Dancy both deserve awards for their performances.It was quite a violent film, but it was not gratuitous, or particularly graphic. It was necessary.My 'favourite' scene, is where Christopher goes to the convent as he has every Monday for 12 years, only to find the nuns brutally raped and murdered. This spoke volumes to me, and made me seriously question how I view the world. To think that anybody could do that to another human being forced me to remove my rose tinted glasses and face up to the fact that the world is a hideous and ugly place sometimes.I greatly admired the character of father Christopher because in spite of all he had seen, he was still able to love those who had committed such wrongs. This is a lesson in itself, and I believe that he was right in saying that God loves us all, but he doesn't have to like our choices. It gave me a small bit of comfort to believe that God was there suffering with every one of the million dead.The saddest part of the film however, is realising that although this is a dramatised version we are watching, it was somebody's reality. The 2500 people who were murdered at ETO would have been left just how it was portrayed in the film, battered, and broken.The real life stories at the end are fascinating in themselves, it is amazing to see how much people can live through, such as the man who hid in the cess pit, or the man who hid under his murdered relatives in order to survive.It really puts everything in perspective.