Agency - English program:.International Coproduction Unit. Agency:.Produced by the National Film Board of Canada in co-production with 13 Production and Arte France with the participation of the Centre national de la cinématographie. Study guide available.

Director, Paul Cowan ; photography, Paul Cowan ; writer, Paul Cowan ; editor, Hannele Halm ; sound, Craig Lapp ; original music, Jean Mallet ; producer, Adam Symansky ; executive producer, Éric Michel ; archival management, Elizabeth Klinck ; stock shot research, Elizabeth Klinck, Bonnie G. Rowan ; research consultant, Virginie Millière ; sound editor, Claude Chevalier ; mixing, Serge Boivin, Shelley Craig ; producer, Paul Saadoun ; production team, Danièle Borg, Fabien Boutron, Catherine Frebourg, Marie-Christine Gely, Malik Menaï, Sandra Moella, Véronique Rabuteau.

Narrator, Karen Feiertag.

Recorded 2005.

With unprecedented access to the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping, The Peacekeepers provides an intimate and dramatic portrait of the struggle to save "a failed state." The film follows the determined and often desperate manoeuvres to avert another Rwandan disaster, this time in the Democratic Republic of Congo (the DRC). Focusing on the UN mission, the film cuts back and forth between the United Nations headquarters in New York and events on the ground in the DRC. We are with the peacekeepers in the 'Crisis Room' as they balance the risk of loss of life on the ground with the enormous sums of money required from uncertain donor countries. We are with UN troops as the northeast Congo erupts and the future of the DRC, if not all of central Africa, hangs in the balance. In the background, but often impinging on peacekeeping decisions, are the painful memory of Rwanda, the worsening crisis in Iraq, global terrorism and American hegemony in world affairs. As Secretary General Kofi Annan tells the General Assembly at the conclusion of The Peacekeepers: "History is a harsh judge. The world will not forgive us if we do nothing." Whether the world's peacekeeper did enough remains to be seen.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Honorable Mention - Category: Social Issues, 2005 The Vaclav Havel Special Award for the film with the most significant contribution to human rights awareness, 2005

Description based on online resource; title from title screen (National Film Board of Canada, viewed 2023-08-10).