There is rarely anything resembling a “full recovery” for genocide survivors. Visions of people slaughtered by machete, their bodies left strewn over church pews, don’t just disappear. Such bloodshed stains people—and nations—for lifetimes.

So it goes in Rwanda, a country where 12 years ago remarkably well-organized Hutu extremist militias systematically murdered hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Tens of thousands of people—stirred on by virulent state radio broadcasts, profound economic resentments and plenty of alcohol—eliminated "cockroaches,” who had once been compatriots, friends or even family. Fearful of becoming embroiled in an African quagmire that might risk Western lives, the United Nations Security Council did little more than observe the carnage for months. A nation's roadmap back from genocide is usually improvised. The tendency is to simply bury the past. But even some tiny semblance of closure can be crucial. On the April 6 anniversary of the beginning of the genocide, the nation’s culture ministry invited Rwandan survivors to watch a re-enactment of the nightmare: a powerful new film, "Shooting Dogs," directed by Michael Caton-Jones and starring John Hurt and Hugh Dancy. The film, released in much of Europe last month, and expected to open in the United States later this year, is based on a story co-written by former British television journalist and documentary filmmaker David Belton, who observed portions of the genocide firsthand. Just after his return to Rwanda's capital, Kigali, where he first showed the film in late March for thousands of survivors, Belton spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Eric Pape. Excerpts: NEWSWEEK: How do you orchestrate a giant screening in a country that's still so devastated?

David Belton: We showed it at the Amahoro soccer stadium, and we could only use the covered portion because it was raining so horrendously hard. People walked for miles in the rainstorm to get there. It was quite remarkable. At one point, the giant inflatable screen began floating down the soccer pitch; I was holding onto it by a rope, and being dragged. Fortunately, Rwandans and diplomats threw off their coats and helped out. How did this film come about?

I was a journalist in Rwanda during the genocide. Afterwards, I was very British, very stiff-upper-lip: I didn’t talk about it. Then a priest there whom I'd known for a long time was killed, in 1998. Vjeko Curic who was one of these tough front-line missionaries you sometimes get in Africa. He had saved many people during the genocide—he probably saved my life, actually. So his death brought it all back to me. I'd always thought I’d done a perfectly fine job covering the genocide, but then I started to wonder how well I’d really done. I thought maybe I should have done more—and the West should have, too. The scenes involving the genocide must have been especially tough to film for the Rwandan crew.

It's odd. The process of making a film is so technical and laborious, and we had a wonderful atmosphere on the set—we filmed, and then we moved the camera, and then we’d have a cup of tea, and then go back to it. But there were some moments when I foresaw where we were going with the story, knew I’d seen enough, and walked away. Some of the Rwandans told me that they did the same. Overall, though, we were very careful. We had doctors, nurses, and trauma counselors on-set every day, in case people lapsed back into memories. We wanted people to feel protected and loved. It wasn’t a normal film set. And I think they got a lot out of it: a purifying of their soul through a visual recreation. Why did you decide to fictionalize the story?

If we'd wanted to make it completely real, we’d have made a documentary. In a drama, you have far less time to send out messages, so it's important to figure out which ones are key. You strip everything else away, as much as you can, and you use what moves you toward your main points. It almost feels like a horror film—characters trapped in a school with crazed killers pushing at the fences, the sense that the world is closing in. Yet it has the gravitas of reality.

It is well directed by Michael, but that tension isn’t something we struggled to dramatize. That's how it was. Did you manage to observe the audience during the Rwanda screening?

I visited various parts of the stands. We’d debated about whether we should show the film there at all—did we have the right to make people go back to that time? But Rwandans relive their memories every day. There is such a powerful sense that the violence of 12 years ago still exists. The violence, the horror and the guilt all continue to commingle. You can’t walk down a street in Kigali without knowing that horrible things happened there. Neighbors turned on neighbors, family members turned on family members. And it is hard for them to know where to place the blame. On government ideologues? On the West? The booze? The impoverishment of your country? On yourself? So we have to offer new ways of managing these memories. That is the role of the Rwanda tribunal, of the books that have been published, and now of feature films. There is an old expression: the Rwandan man only weeps on the inside, into his belly. We are trying to help people to weep on the outside. And how did people respond?

People said, "Thank you for bringing this film here." Many were survivors from the school where the film is set. It was extraordinary to see such people completely enthralled. They were very pleased by how visually accurate it was: the way people dressed, the way they walked. There were moments when I thought we’d cause more uproar than we did. Parts of the film are brutal—not gratuitously, but tough to watch. Some scenes affected people as they would in the West. But there is a scene at a roadblock that I thought would horrify people more than it did. The fact is, Rwandans know it. Their reaction was more "You got that right" than "That was horrific." But more importantly, people were genuinely emotional. They cried and then wept. It was, in that sense, truly cathartic. If you were remaking the film now, would you do anything differently?

There are small things. But we told the right story, primarily to show the West where it failed Rwanda. It is also important that Rwandans know that this particular story is being told. Why is it that we always hear "never again" when it comes to such horrific crimes, and yet we've had Cambodia’s killing fields, Rwanda’s genocide, and now the mass killings in Sudan’s Darfur?

If you have something the West wants, they’ll stop such things before they happen. But if you’re poor and black, then you’re on your own. There is an inclination in the West not to get involved unless there is a vested interest. Until they take a moral interest, there will be more Darfurs, more Rwandas. But one encouraging thing is that people under 30 see this film differently. They are emotionally blown away by it, but they also have a sense of outrage. Some have turned on me and said, "You were there. How could you have allowed this to happen?" If we can inform people enough about the way we behaved, and if they can find the moral probity to tell politicians that they aren’t doing enough, maybe we can truly mean “never again.”