Hotel Rwanda

Whenever someone says that the Holocaust should teach us to "never forget," I think of places like Rwanda, nearly 50 years after the concentration camps were liberated.  Hotel Rwanda is not a pretty movie (lord do I need a comedy tomorrow!), but tell os the genocide of the Tutsi people by the Hutu militia in Rwanda.

The real Rusesabangina

Don Cheadle plays Paul Rusesabangina,  the manager of a luxury Hotel des Milles Collines in Kigala, Rwanda, who sheltered more than 1200 Tutsi irefugees in his hotel and prevented them from being slaughtered, after they were abandoned by every United Nations nation.  The UN evacuated all the of UN people and left the Rwandans behind to be killed.

Both Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo, who plays his wife, were nominated for Academy Awards in 1994.  Cheadle won the Golden Globe for hisi performance.

The only good white guy in the film is Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte), head of the UN Peacekeeping force, who tries as hard as he can to support Rusesabangina. 

There is no "down" time in this movie.  It starts with slaughter and is filled with one harrowing thing after another.

The thing about Rusesabangina (a Hutu married to a Tutsi, with three children) is that what perhaps made him so successful in saving as many people as he did was he never lost his self esteem, always remained a hotel manager, treated people as guests, and learned how to work the system to get protection from those in charge.