Hotel Rwanda(2004)
dir. Terry George
A hotel manager shelters a thousand from genocide.
Where to watch: Free on Kanopy, Hoopla, Roku Channel, Fandango at Home; rent $3.99 (JustWatch US)Letterboxd ↗
In 1994, Paul Rusesabagina, the manager of a luxury hotel in Kigali, shelters more than a thousand Tutsi and moderate Hutu refugees while militias kill outside and the UN pulls back. The film follows him as he bribes, bluffs and begs to keep them alive. Terry George directs, and Don Cheadle earned an Oscar nomination for the lead.
Why it’s here
The film puts a viewer inside what it means to ask for help and be left alone. What's pedagogical is how clearly it names the radio propaganda and the foreign officials who knew. Note: it's a dramatization, and Rusesabagina's role has been disputed by some survivors, so watch it with the book Gourevitch (suggested 10/23) and a Rwandan voice.
Where This Film Lives
- Setting
- Rwanda
Read Alongside
Books that share a topic, theme, or setting with this film.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
Philip Gourevitch
Rwanda, and the world that looked away.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
Christopher R. Browning
How regular men became mass killers.
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Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War
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What happens when the world uses Lebanon.
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Amal Unbound
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The debt wasn't hers. The cage is.
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Anil's Ghost
Michael Ondaatje
A forensic anthropologist in Sri Lanka tries to name the disappeared.
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Balkan Ghosts
Robert Kaplan
Why the Balkans keep breaking, explained.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers' Strike of 1909
Michelle Markel
One girl stood up. Twenty thousand followed.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Capitalism and Slavery
Eric Williams
Slavery didn't fund empire. Slavery WAS empire.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST