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The f ilm 'Hotel Rwanda' (Terry George, 2004) has reached the public at a time when, eleven years after the event, the Rwandan genocide has never been more topical.
More and more is coming to light about how the world stood by and watched while people were slaughtered right in front of the noses of UN peacekeepers. Critics of the UN point to the institution's failure to prevent the genocide, and compare it with the world's current failure to act in Sudan while thousands die in Darfur.
In the meantime, a number of other films about the tragedy are being completed or have been released. In February, the Berlin Film Festival screened the HBO-produced Sometimes in April (Raoul Peck, 2004), and still to be released is the BBC's Shooting Dogs (Michael Caton-Jones, 2005). But the first to get a general cinema release in Australia was Hotel Rwanda. It is not a film with the production values of Schindler's List (Stephen Spielberg, 1993) or The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002). However, the Oscar-nominated performances of Don Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo, in the lead roles of Hotel Milles Collines manager Paul Rusesabagina and his wife Tatiana, attracted a lot of attention in the press, and helped to give the film an extended run.
On 6 April 1994, Rwandan President Habyarimana's plane was shot down by unknown forces. This event was a convenient pretext for Hutu Power extremists in the military and the government, led by Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, to implement their plans to wipe out the Tutsis, who made up a minority fifteen per cent of the population. The extremists had at their disposal a militia force consisting largely of angry, dispossesed young men, known as the interahamwe ('those who attack together'). The militia, together with certain units of the military and sections of the local government administration, co-opted much of the Hutu population into taking up machetes and joining the killing. Between April and July, about 800,000 people were massacred, around three-quarters of the Rwandan Tutsi population. Many Hutu moderates were also killed, including prominent government and human rights figures in the capital Kigali during the first few days of the genocide.
Hotel Rwanda has much to recommend it in its depiction of various aspects...