Waking Up To Hotel Rwanda

The Rwandan genocide of 1994 was one of the most horriffic events of the 20th century, resulting in the deaths of one million people in just three months. Yet few Westerners showed much concern at the time, and even fewer today are disturbed that the same events are just a trigger away from occurring again. Why don’t we care? Why doesn’t our media tell us what’s going on? Why do we have movie after movie about World War II and none about the current state of Africa?

Director Terry George believes it’s “sub-conscious racism, that [we believe] African life is not on a par, is not worth as much as Western life, that somehow we still have the prejudice that these people are just emerging from savagery. They slaughter each other, and it’s not worth our intervention.” George rose to prominence when he wrote the script for In the Name of the Father, and he’s returned with another film based on a historic event. Hotel Rwanda is the extraordinary story of Paul Rusesabagina, a Rwandan hotel manager who was able to save 1,268 people during the spring and summer of 1994.

The genocide began in March 1994. The Hutus and the Tutsis—the two primary ethnic groups in Rwanda—had been at odds since the German and later Belgian colonizers set the two against each other in order to rule more efficiently. The Tutsis were favored under the colonists, but the Hutus rose to power after 1959. The strife continued for decades, with Tutsis fleeing to neighboring countries and eventually forming a rebel army in 1990. The conflict reached its tipping point when a Hutu general and the president of Burundi were assassinated, an event Hutu extremists used as a pretext to begin a horrific campaign of slaughter.

While the film attempts to document the genocide, it does so by focusing on the character of Rusesabagina (played by Don Cheadle), who gave refuge to hundreds of fleeing Tutsis. Calling in dozens of favors with his extensive network of contacts, he was able to hold the Hutu extremists (the Interahamwe militia) at bay, until the Tutsi rebels drove the Hutu from power. Cheadle, who’s created an impressive body of work in the last couple years, portrays Rusesabagina as an efficient manager who cares deeply about his family and the people in he looks after. He’s able to move in all sorts of crowds, from peasants to generals and UN commanders, and this ability is foundational to his success. “I never thought I was doing something different,” Rusesabagina modestly declares from the incongruous setting of the Four Seasons in Chicago. “I thought I was just acting as a normal hotel manager.”