Roger Spottiswoode at the 2007 Toronto Film Festival Photo by Matt Carr

Best known for the Pierce Brosnan Bond flick Tomorrow Never Dies, 62-year-old director Roger Spottiswoode promoted a very different film at the Toronto International Film Festival recently. Shake Hands With the Devil is the latest cinematic foray into the retelling of events that shook sub-Saharan Africa in the mid-1990s, detailing a Canadian UN Lieutenant-General's handling of the Rwandan genocide.

Months into a fragile cease-fire, the jet of Hutu president of Rwanda Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down as it returned to the capital Kigali, killing all on board and igniting genocidal retaliation. The Presidential guard, elements of the Rwandan army, extremist militia and other supporters of the old Hutu-controlled regime immediately set about eradicating their Tutsi opponents. In one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century, more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were butchered in 100 days of state-sponsored killing. The majority of the surviving Tutsi population was then displaced to desperately overcrowded refugee camps in adjacent countries. Perpetrators of the genocide held dominion over the camps, complicating the reintegration and repatriation of Rwandans uprooted by the violence.

It took a decade before filmmakers figured enough time had elapsed for wounds to close and the world of cinema would be able to digest the atrocities of Rwanda. Now, 13 years after President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane went down, a flurry of films by Western directors eager to illuminate the genocide have been made. 2004's Hotel Rwanda, which had been described as Africa's Schindler's List, garnered three Academy Award nominations. Raoul Peck's Sometimes in April tells the story of two Hutu brothers, one a reluctant soldier who is separated from his Tutsi wife and children as violence engulfs Kigali, the other a popular radio host espousing propaganda from Radio RTLM. The most recent screen take on the genocide, Michael Caton-Jones's Shooting Dogs (released in the United States as Beyond the Gates) held its world premiere in March at a football stadium in Kigali in front of 15,000 guests. While Hotel Rwanda was mostly lensed in South Africa, Shooting Dogs — based on the experiences of BBC news producer David Belton working in the country during the genocide — was shot in the original locations of the scenes portrayed, often using survivors of the massacre as extras.

So, with Shake Hands with the Devil, what does Spottiswoode hope to add to the growing cinematic record of the Rwandan genocide? Ice-blue eyes stare out from below a shock of gray hair.

"The subject is Rwanda and the genocide — and all genocides, I guess," he says, answering slowly but choosing his words carefully. "And it is the United Nations. And the UN is as relevant now as it was five years ago or ten years ago and what to do with this organization that we all want to help make the world better and it is constantly dysfunctional in some way.