After portraying hockey hero Maurice ‘The Rocket’ Richard, actor Roy Dupuis will play another Canadian icon-in-the-making, starring as Roméo Dallaire in the $10-million adaptation of Shake Hands with the Devil, the former lieutenant-general’s award-winning memoir.

Daillaire, now a senator, was in charge in the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda in 1994 and is known for his efforts, although failed, to alert the world of its unfolding genocide.

Producers from Barna-Alper Productions and The Halifax Film Company showcased their star at a press conference in Montreal on June 2.

Asked how he felt about playing a ‘powerless’ character, the Quebec film and TV star said he admires Dallaire’s courage.

‘He did succeed in convincing all the people around him, the [UN] soldiers, to stay. So in that way he was a winner,’ said Dupuis, seated next to Dallaire.

Both men were flanked by the film’s producers, Laszlo Barna and Michael Donovan, as well as the director, Roger Spottiswoode (Ripley Underground, Tomorrow Never Dies).

Donovan (This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Bowling for Columbine) described the four-year process to get the film off the ground as a crusade.

‘These are real people, so I felt a really big responsibility to get it right,’ said the Halifax-based producer, adding that the film’s bleak and complicated story was both a problem and an opportunity. ‘One has to be emotional and objective to make a film, and objectivity started to be impossible.’

The picture will be BAP’s first dramatic feature, and follows last month’s merging of HFC with Toronto-based Decode Entertainment.

A quarter of the money to make the film comes from Telefilm Canada. Cash from Radio-Canada, CBC, The Movie Network, Movie Central, Super Écran and The Harold Greenberg Fund will round out the budget. The producers have also applied for funding from SODEC. Seville Pictures will distribute in Canada.

This is not the first time Dallaire’s story has been on film. The 2004 documentary Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire was well-received, while Nick Nolte plays a character based on Dallaire in Hotel Rwanda. A Dallaire-like character also appears in the Quebec film Un dimanche à Kigali.

Shake Hands with the Devil will start shooting on location in Rwanda this month.