Let’s Go to the Movies: Week of Feb. 21, 2022: Hotel Rwanda



Hotel Rwanda (2005) | Official Trailer | MGM Studios

Hotel Rwanda (2005) | Official Trailer | MGM Studios


Is there a genocide happening before our very eyes? What is the cause of the unheard-of increase in all-cause mortality in Western nations? How is it possible that societies, neighborhoods, and even families are divided as seldom before? What fuels this? Who benefits?

The 2004 film Hotel Rwanda tells the story of the 1994 killing of at least 800,000 Tutsis from Rwanda’s bi-ethnic population of Hutus and Tutsis—one of the most brutal and shocking genocides to have happened in the modern age. In that series of events, radical militias were backed, armed, and instructed by the military and the Rwandan government, while UN peacekeeping troops were told to stand down. Why? And who backed the Rwandan government?

At the time, Rwandan ID cards displayed the person’s ethnic group. The militias would set up roadblocks to pick out the Tutsis for slaughter. In addition, lists of government opponents were handed out to militias who went and killed them, along with their entire families.

The film, based on true events, tells the story of a courageous hotel owner, Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu, and his wife Tatiana, a Tutsi, who saved the lives of over a thousand refugees.

In 2021, in a dubious turn of circumstances, Rusesabagina was accused and charged with terrorism and sentenced to 25 years in jail.

Scene from Hotel Rwanda: There Will Be No Rescue

Hotel Rwanda on Wikipedia

The “Rwandan Genocide” on World without Genocide

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