Canadian filmmaker Peter Raymont is the producer and director of over 100 documentary films during a 30-year career. He talked to us from Toronto about making Shake Hands with the Devil.

BBC Four: How did you persuade Romeo Dallaire to return to Rwanda?
Peter Raymont: I pursued him for many years. I first went to Rwanda in 1999 to make another film about a Canadian NGO that was helping orphans there. I realised that the film to make, as a Canadian, would be about Dallaire; especially if he was going back to visit the place. I started writing him letters and emails, sent faxes to his home, to his doctors, to his lawyers, to his publisher, to his agent, to his military people. I got nothing for years - it was very frustrating. Finally a lawyer friend of mine told me that the book was coming out and this fellow in Halifax, Michael Donovan, had got both the documentary and feature film rights, so I'd better go and see him. Michael essentially gave me the documentary rights. Then I had to win the trust of Dallaire. He wanted to go back on a private visit with his wife and show her the place, but in the end I think he could see the value of the documentary. And now he's very supportive of it and uses it in his ongoing mission to tell the world about what happened.

BBC Four: Were you at all worried about what the experience might be like for him and how intrusive you might be?
Peter Raymont: I was worried about what effect the trip would have on him whether there was a camera there or not - whether it would put him back in that depressing spiral. It was his decision, but he couldn't go back until three things had happened. First he had to testify in Arusha at the International Criminal Court in January 2004. Secondly, he had to feel psychologically up to it. And thirdly, he had to finish his book. He also wanted to be invited back. He was quite nervous because he wasn't sure how people felt about him there. The film doesn't really address this but there are people in Rwanda who are angry with him for not doing more. But he finally felt that the 10th anniversary was the right time. Of course I was concerned about being too intrusive, but he knew the film would only be successful if it could really get inside his head.

BBC Four: Dallaire evidently still carries an enormous burden about Rwanda. What's your measure of him?
Peter Raymont: I have enormous admiration for Dallaire. In the end you have to decide whether the guy made the right decision. As Stephen Lewis says in the film, it's impossible in retrospect to second guess every decision Dallaire made. Overall though, the guy is a great hero. He put his life on the line; he stayed when he was told to come home - he thereby saved thousands of lives by setting up those UN-protected sites in the football stadium and the Hotel des Mille Collines (the famous Hotel Rwanda), at the hospital and at the UN headquarters itself. It's remarkable that he wasn't killed - he was targeted and there was a price on his head. Then when he came home he was really another type of hero by talking about post-traumatic stress. That has allowed soldiers in Canada, and perhaps other countries, to seek psychiatric help. Deep within him there's still that guilt that he didn't do all he could. The experience in Rwanda really made the man - it changed him so profoundly from what he was before. He's now devoted the rest of his life, doing whatever he can.

BBC Four: I love the sequence where Dallaire takes his wife to the hilltop where he used to go to 'escape' the genocide. What was it like seeing them together in Rwanda?
Peter Raymont: I was very pleased that his wife came. At one stage when we were planning the trip he said, "I can bring my wife or I can bring my shrink - and my wife is cheaper." He was only partly joking. He really did want Elizabeth to come and she wanted to go. He wanted to show her the places that meant so much to him. It was very hard for her to understand what he had gone through, despite him writing the book. I thought it was great that she was there and she's an extraordinary person herself. She was sending care packages over to him and to the people in that UN building - boxes of provisions and medical supplies - that the Canadian army and the UN and no one else was sending. It was ridiculous.

BBC Four: What do you think the film tells us about the UN?
Peter Raymont: I think Stephen Lewis says it very well: this labyrinth doesn't work very well - particularly the Department of Peace Keeping Operations. It's disgraceful the way the UN didn't respond, even more particularly how certain countries didn't respond. I was naïve about the UN going into this. I had this vague notion of this wonderful world body where people got together and acted. But the big decisions at the UN are primarily driven by the permanent members of the Security Council, so unless the US, the UK, France and the other major countries want to do something then it isn't going to happen. There's a lot of blame to go around in what happened in Rwanda but most of it lies at the seat of people like Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton.

BBC Four: The lack of a major international presence at the 10th anniversary ceremonies is one of the many sad moments in the film.
Peter Raymont: The Belgian prime minister showed up and made a lame apology but basically nobody bothered showing up. Nobody cares. As Lewis says, Rwandans have nothing to buy and nothing to sell, so who cares? There's really this fundamental issue of whether we feel we are our brother's keeper. Is the value of a Rwandan life the same as that of someone living in London or Toronto or New York? Until we really believe in our hearts that your life is equal to a kid in the hills of Rwanda then there will be more genocide, probably in Africa. I think it's inevitable.

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