Director Michael Caton Jones travelled to Rwanda to make Shooting Dogs, an acclaimed drama about the 1994 massacre of Tutsis, which the UN forces were powerless to stop. Paul Farren talked to Jones about making this poignant tale on a tiny budget, the acting genius of John Hurt, and the honour of having two features released on the same day (the other is Basic Instinct 2!)

Shooting Dogs is a deceptively straightforward telling of the events that led to the massacre of over two thousand Tutsis at the Ecole Technique Officielle in the Rwandan capital Kigali in April 1994, just one of many incidents perpetrated by the Hutu majority that claimed the lives of over eight hundred thousand in one hundred days. The tragedy was watched by the world, but no one helped. UN forces in Rwanda were under orders to stand back from the atrocities, maintaining their observational status, and finally they left Rwanda and the Tutsi to their fate.

One of the most powerful aspects of Michael Caton Jones's film is the fact that it was not only filmed in Rwanda, but in the very place the events occurred. The cast and crew was comprised of Rwandans who would have been affected by the conflict, through their own experience or loss of loved ones. 'We found in the making of it, and this was a daily thing, that we were working with these people, and every one of them had faith, and that somehow permeated its way into your consciousness and the filmmaking process. You don't know how, it just does. They're dealing with it day by day, and the whole country has not moved on and forgotten'.

Jones is a prolific director who first came to the Rwandan project several years ago when it was in limbo. Jones first came to attention for Scandal, his drama about the Profumo Affair. His career quickly moved him in the direction of Hollywood, though he has managed to move back and forth between crowd pleasers such as Doc Hollywood and Rob Roy, and more personal projects. But, of late, job satisfaction was not to be found in Hollywood. ' I was getting more and more dissatisfied with the kind of films I was being offered and the kind of films that they were making. I wanted to find something that I could get passionate about. Hollywood is 'another hundred million fuckin' dollars' – you end up in the cycle of studio vacuity. So I came back to Europe to look for something I could get into.' But finding a project that would fuel his passion was to have its downside. 'The reality is you know you're going to make a film for no money and you're not going to get paid. So I came back and found this, which was a kind of dead project at the time, and I went nuts for it and tried to use some of my influence to convince the BBC and the Film Council that it should be made, and they fell for it (chuckles), which was the hardest part of it.'

One of the most challenging decisions was to shoot in Rwanda, surely a country still reeling from the genocide now nearly twelve years old – not a long time in terms of painful memories. Why the decision to shoot there? 'They wanted me to go to South Africa,' he explains. 'I knew there was another film being made at the same time (Hotel Rwanda). I wasn't very comfortable about trying to recreate something somewhere far away from it, so they sent me to Rwanda. Within minutes of getting there I said of course we have to do it here, it deserves to be made here, this isn't my story it's their story'.

On a practical level the production had other obstacles, which Jones is quite pragmatic about. 'I knew it was going to be hard because there is no filmmaking infrastructure in the country, none whatsoever, so you're building everything from the ground up. There were no actors; there was no nothing. But I also thought if you do go in and suffer those hard parts and you get through it, it will somehow permeate into everything you do. I wanted to do was do something that would get me away from the artifice of the studio system anyway. By doing it and making it difficult for myself it was going to make me work quite hard. But I knew somehow it was going to pay off, I didn't know what way, but I knew it would. So the process developed as we went through it, it became a bigger film than I had realised it would be'.

Considering the lack of infrastructure in Rwanda I ask if had he considered shooting on an easier format than the potentially cumbersome 35mm, especially considering it was made for a mere three million pounds. 'I thought about digital, but then I thought that it was something that came in after 1994 [the year of the Rwandan genocide]. There would have been something slightly fake about it, that was my feeling. I didn't make strategic decisions about how I was going to do it. Originally I was going to shoot it on 16mm, but when I got there I changed my mind. It was so amazingly visual that it would have been criminal not to exploit that'.

The film has come under fire recently, the filmmakers being accused of a lack of sensitivity. Jones explains, that this could not be further from the truth. 'We were always careful to keep people away when we were doing it. The thing that got the hysteria going was the chanting [a re-enactment of the Hutu siege]. Schoolgirls heard the chanting and got a flashback, and I think it became very illustrative to us just what a responsibility we had. We had these children screaming, screaming in terror, it put a chill over everybody and we thought you know what? It's not just a movie, we've got a responsibility, that's why we're doing it. It was a visceral experience, it really got to the pit of your stomach, horrible.' Elsewhere the film was criticised for showing the events from a white perspective. 'That was purposely done. If you're going to make it for people in the west then you put in someone from the west who is asking why is this happening, what can be done. Nothing can be done, but we have to do something. Then I think what you are doing is making the audience see through the eyes of these people and give them some understanding.

Jones's concerns are not about looking for heroes or villains; the film unfolds in a deceptively straightforward manner: Hutu president is killed, reprisals ensue, and we watch as the inevitable slowly unfolds. I note that one does not come away from Shooting Dogs with a demonised view of the Hutu, or of the events as a terrible evil, but a terrible tragedy. 'Yes, they're human beings, it's too simplistic to say they are all evil. People do things for a reason they don't just come out of nowhere, like the Al Qaeda. They're doing things for what they consider a reason. However, within the context of the film I couldn't explain everything anyway. What I tried to do was to focus it down to what is common amongst human beings. I wasn't making it for the Rwandans, to be honest, I was making it for the West'.

Jones is adamant about what his creative agenda was once shooting began; practical decisions aside, not getting in the way of the story was the most important issue to be addressed. 'I'm not trying to give you an education or a history lesson here', he explains, 'I'm trying to engage your emotions, your empathy about these people's circumstances. One the best ways of doing this is to cut down as much distance between the intention and the execution and get rid of as much artifice in the middle as possible. You can do that in a bunch of different ways, you don't do what you normally do on a film, which is jazz it up. You try and force yourself the other way, which is don't get in the way of the fucking script. It takes some restraint to do that actually, but I now think that was the right way to go, because it works. Again I was a bit nervous that it wasn't necessarily going to be the case'.

One of Jones's interesting qualities is his modesty, it is the modesty of a man who has some confidence in himself; not false modesty, but the kind that belongs to someone who understands and respects the talent of everyone else around him, but still knows the importance of his place amongst them. 'Obviously I'm very proud of it and I feel very strongly about it. But it's a film with a lot of collaboration; cast and crew came together really well and I can't take the credit for that, I'm just the ringmaster'.

He becomes quite animated when talking about one of the key collaborators, John Hurt, who has brought his pedigree to the production playing Fr. Christopher, the head of the school and a man going through a crisis of faith. ' I think John is one of the greatest screen actors there's ever been. I think he's completely under appreciated, certainly in Britain. I think people don't know how good he is. What he does is exactly the same as De Niro. They both have this ability to portray human emotions with an unflinching honesty. It's almost impossible for them to be fake about emotion. For an actor it's not about lying it's not about acting, it's about reaching into those places – you don't even do it consciously, you have to go to a place were you're behaving honestly and you're not thinking, you're just being. Both John and Bob have this fucking nose, bullshit detectors: "There's something wrong with this line; I don't know what it is, but I wouldn't say or do this and it's just not right." Both of them – I watch and listen to them very carefully, and they'll find if there is something not honest about it. And it's that that communicates itself on the screen, you hear them and you go, "I know what he's thinking." Moments of realisation where we see thoughts on someone's face.'

On a lighter note I mention the film made after Shooting Dogs as being a million miles away from the dark sombre tale of Rwanda: Basic Instinct 2. Not so much long awaited as long time coming, a sequel to the film that made Sharon Stone a household name. He points out that they are both being released the 31st of March, which has t o be an unprecedented coup for any director, though not one that would get him into the Guinness Book of Records. So what was the incentive to make Basic Instinct – I don't doubt there may have been some passion involved, but why? 'Like I say, when you make a film like Shooting Dogs, you know you're not going to get paid (laughs). There I was sitting atop the moral high ground but broke. They offered me a bunch of money, and I said, 'yep, okay I'm your man'. I managed to make it look like a European noir. It's a case of a change is as good as a rest. You know the deal when you're making Basic Instinct, you try to make it slick and glossy and that kind of thing. I'm fortunate that I can do more than one type of filmmaking.' He is insistent that he had enough creative reasons to take the helm. 'I am a professional film director, and my job is to make that film, not to indulge myself, but to make that film. And I take a pride in trying to do that. You get your stuff in, I worked with some very good people on that, it has a look about it that is quite artful and different from what people are going to be expecting, because there is no expectation, as you say. But you will see some really shit hot camera work and design. But you just do the best you can.'

I haven't seen Basic instinct 2, and to my knowledge no critic in this country is going to see it before it gets released, which is a warning that speaks for itself. As for Michael Caton Jones, well whatever he does with it there is no doubt he will do his best. He has no delusions about what kind of film he is making, 'It's simply an entertainment to get people out of their houses on a Saturday night; I make no bones about it, that's what it is'. The vacuity of the Hollywood studio system may stifle the flame of creativity, but it does pay the bills.

Shooting Dogs and Basic Instinct 2 are released 31st of March.
Shooting Dogs is reviewed here. Visit the official website