"It should be mandatory for everyone to see Hotel Rwanda. The carnage it graphically shows and the lessons it painfully teaches should be burned into every soul." Bob Bloom JOURNAL AND COURIER "The twofold agenda in Hotel Rwanda is to commemorate what Paul Rusesabagina did and to shame each and every Westerner who sees the movie. On both of those counts it is successful." Ty Burr BOSTON GLOBE "Best film of the year: an ethically rich story of a heroic African who responds to the deep dimensions of violence in a chaotic world by widening the circle of his compassion." Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat SPIRITUALITY AND HEALTH "Here's a thrilling, socially committed film that knows how to engage an audience and communicate a point of view without degenerating into a harangue. More of these, please." Sean Burns PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY "A story so powerful it can't help but speak to both the heart and the conscience." Robert Denerstein DENVER ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS

"It is a passionate powerful cautionary portrait of what can and does happen when the world looks away." Duane Dudek MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL "Cheadle embodies the humanity and bravery of a man who does the right thing despite his own terror" Lori Hoffman ATLANTIC CITY WEEKLY "Don Cheadle takes his rightful place among America's greatest actors in Hotel Rwanda." Lou Lumenick NEW YORK POST "It's much like an African Shindler's List and is just as uplifting." Eric Lurio GREENWICH VILLAGE GAZETTE "What makes the film not just harrowing but transcendent is Cheadle. He does nothing traditionally heroic. He just presents a picture of basic decency, showing how, when combined with courage, decency can result in an awe- inspiring moral steadfastness." Mick LaSalle SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

The Inside Story

"This is one of those movies, like Schindlers List, that may give you nightmares. This is one of those movies, like Schindlers List, that should be seen anyway." Linda Cook KWQC-TV IOWA

After the massacre of the Jews in concentration camps run by the Germans in WW2, the world promised that genocide on such a scale would never happen again. In light of what happened after in places such as Cambodia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia they were hollow words. Millions of frustrated citizens around the world read countless newspaper accounts of the genocide in Rwanda while the world stood still and did nothing. That mighty organization, the United Nations, an organization the world believe would step in and save the Tutsi's was powerless to stop the murder of innocent civillians who were butchered at a rate of around 8,000 souls a day in Rwanda. This is not the first time that genocide has raized its ugly head on the African continent. It would seem to many decent people that in many ways genocide is just a past-time for many of the corrupt governments that have come to power there. While many people may not like it, unfortunately even our country has, in its own way, supported the regime of African tyrants. A good example of that is allowing our sportspeople to travel to Zimbabwe which is run by the criminal, murdering Dictator Robert Mugabe. Even closer to home, many Australian's have strongly expressed their displeasure at our kowtowing down to people like the recalcitrant Dr Mahathir Mohamad and the disgraceful way the Whitlam and subsequent governments allowed Indonesia to get away with genocide in East Timor and, murdered our journalists. The story of Paul Rusesabagina, recipient of the Immortal Chaplains Prize for Humanity [2000] and Amnesty International "Enduring Spirit" Award [2004] is one that should never be erased from human history. Here 1,000,000 would lose their lives in a terrible conflict the root of which can be traced back to the countries years under colonial rule by Belgium. How significant is 1,000,000 souls? Consider a terrible fact. Rwanda at the start of the internal conflict numbered 6,000,000. The savagery of the killing claimed lives at a faster rate than the Holocaust. Many were hacked to death by machette. "In carrying out their genocide, the Nazis used technology to kill in an anonymous way; for them, the victims were only numbers. In Rwanda, in a perversion of the legendary African conviviality and solidarity, people killed one by one, among those they knew. Some murdered neighbors. Women pushed men to rape other women. And instead of protecting their flock, some church leaders delivered the Tutsis among them to the killers. Since the brutalities unfolded in full view, we could not pretend, as some had during the Nazi genocide, that we did not know. Yet most of us in Africa did not grasp the gravity of what was going on. It is only when the killing spree ended and we started counting the bodies that we realized there had been a genocide — and a well-planned one, as we later learned. Months before, the Rwandan government had imported thousands of dollars worth of machetes from China." The Genocide Next Door by EMMANUEL DONGALA. "Hotel Rwanda" is directed by Terry George who said at a reception after the film's Hollywood screening, "It's simple, African lives are not seen as valuable as the lives of Europeans or Americans." While that sounds harsh, it appears true in light of the latest attrocities by rebel Hutu's as reported recently. "A Hutu rebel group is implicated in the massacre of 160 Congolese in Burundi in August, a U.N. report said on Monday, but contaminated evidence makes it hard to conclude who else may have taken part. The Forces for National Liberation, the lone Hutu rebel group refusing to join the Burundian peace process, claimed responsibility for the attacks, but many in Burundi doubt its ability to conduct the operation on its own," the report said. Recently U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell reported that genocide is taking place in Darfur. "How far have we really come [since the genocide in Rwanda]?" said Bill Schultz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, who is based in New York. "The Sudanese government has been emboldened by international inaction. They think they can get away with murder, and frankly there's every reason to believe they are right." Many may be wondering how different it would be if these were oil rich countries but the weight of that arguement diminishes in the eyes of world leaders as it did with Iraq. The story of Genocide, which is now evident in Iraq, thanks to suicide bombers, is one that hasn't gone away and that is sad. "Hotel Rwanda" surely will prick the concience of many, but will it have a desired effect? Director Terry George hopes so. "This was a story that had to be told, a story that would take cinema-goers around the world inside an event that, to all our great shame, we knew nothing about. But more than that, it would allow audiences to join in the love, the loss, the fear and the courage of a man who could have been any of us – if we ever could find that courage. I knew if we got this story right and got it made, it would have audiences from Peoria to Pretoria cheering for a real African hero who fought to save lives in a hell we would not dare to invent." Terry George also, like many, expresses a fear that the world hasn't learnt a lesson from Rwanda. "Ten years on, politicians from around the world have made the pilgrimage to Rwanda to ask for forgiveness from the survivors," he notes, "and once more the same politicians promise never again. But it’s happening yet again in Sudan, or the Congo, or some Godforsaken place where life is worth less than dirt. Places where men and women like Paul and Tatiana shame us all by their decency and bravery." There's obviously a lot of passion in Terry George who visited Rwanda with Paul Rusesabagina, travelling, filming locations and meeting local people including Paul's relatives. "It was a unique privilege to visit Rwanda with Paul," says George, "to get a sense of the love and admiration people had for him. When we walked back into the Hotel Mille Collines, we met many of the survivors, cooks, cleaners, people Paul had sheltered. There was true joy in their eyes." They also visited Marambi. "We paid a visit to a former technical college at Marambi in Southern Rwanda," says George. "I passed through rooms filled with the mummified skeletons of some of the 40,000 people who were massacred over four days in April 1994. As I listened to the sole survivor of that massacre tell of those days, I truly felt there was nothing more important in my life than to make this film." Crew Bytes "HOTEL RWANDA" was .......
directed by Terry George ["Some Mother's Son"]; written by Keir Pearson ["Hotel Rwanda"] and Terry George ["In the Name of the Father", "Sons and Warriors", "The Boxer" and "Hart's War"]; costume design by Ruy Filipe ["Cyborg Cop", "Lunacop", "Jump the Gun" and "Malunde"]; production design by Johnny Breedt ["Cult of Fury ", "Sumuru" and "Duma"] and Tony Burrough ["A Knight's Tale", "Tuck Everlasting", "The Santa Clause 2" and "Ladder 49"]; edited by Naomi Geraghty ["A Map of the World", "Rosen's Son", "Blue Moon" and "In America"]; cinematograhpy by Robert Fraisse ["Ronin", "Enemy at the Gates", "Luther" and "The Notebook"]; original music by Rupert Gregson-Williams ["Virtual Sexuality", "Thunderpants", "The Night We Called It A Day" and "King Arthur"] produced by A Kitman Ho ["Platoon", "Wall Street", "Born on the Fourth of July", "JFK", "Brokedown Palace" and "Ali"] and Terry George ["In the Name of the Father"]. Casting About "HOTEL RWANDA" stars .......
Don Cheadle ["Bulworth", "The Family Man", "Swordfish", "Ocean's Twelve" and "After The Sunset"]; Sophie Okonedo ["Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls", "The Jackal", "Dirty Pretty Things" and "Cross My Heart"]; Joaquin Phoenix ["Quills", "Gladiator", "Signs", "The Village" and "Ladder 49"]; Desmond Dube ["The Long Run"]; David O'Hara ["Braveheart", "The Devil's Own", "Made" and "Den of Lions"]; Cara Seymour ["You've Got Mail", "A Good baby", "Adaptation", "Gangs of New york" and "Birth"]; Fana Mokoena ["Dangerous Ground"]; Hakeem Kae-Kazim ["Out On a Limb" and "Othello: A South African Tale"]; Ofentse Modiselle ["Hotel Rwanda"]; Antonio David Lyons ["American History X", "The Sum of All Fears" and "Masked and Anonymous"] and Nick Nolte ["Lorenzo's Oil", "U Turn", "The Golden Bowl", "Investigating Sex" and "The Good Thief"] as Colonel Oliver. What It's All About

"It should be mandatory for everyone to see Hotel Rwanda. The carnage it graphically shows and the lessons it painfully teaches should be burned into every soul." Bob Bloom JOURNAL AND COURIER

Paul Rusesabagina is the House Manager at the Sabena airlines owned Hotel Mille Collines in Kigali, Rwanda . Paul is a well known figure to those who hold positions of power in these troubled times in Rwanda. He exchanges favours for items hard to come by such as Single Malt Scoth Whisky. They are skills that will come in handy when news comes that Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana is killed after his plane is shot down over Kigali Airport on April 6th 1994. At home with his family and friends, Paul is alarmed to hear cries of help coming from the street. They venture to the gate and witness his neighbours being harrassed by the Hutu militia, known as the Interahamwe. They are looking for Tutsis, or 'cockroaches' as they call them. The Interahamwe are everywhere, responding to calls over the local radio to eradicate the cockroaches, blamed for the death of the President. Next day at the Hotel Mille Collines Paul is left in charge as the European staff flee the carnage. Paul soon finds himself left with over a thousand refugees. Their lives are in his hands. But Paul's life is not safe either. He is a Hutu married to a Tutsi. Against overwhelming odds, in a struggle that get harder by the minute, Paul uses everything at his disposal to try and save those at the Hotel Mille Collines. The Verdict "A wonderful tribute to a passionate man who risked everything while sadly the rest of the world stood by risking nothing. A painfull reminder of how silent the moral majority can be. Relies on a powerful simplicity without resorting to outright shock and horror tactics. Superbly done, Terry George's "Hotel Rwanda" should be compulsary viewing. A real conscience pricker! Very Highly Recommended." The Cast

Don Cheadle Sophie Okonedo Nick Nolte Joaquin Phoenix Desmond Dube David O'Hara Cara Seymour Fana Mokoena Hakeem Kae-Kazim Tony Kgoroge Mosa Kaiser Mathabo Pieterson Ofentse Modiselle Xolani Mali Rosie Montene Neil McCarthy Kid Sitholo Jeremiah Ndlovu Lebo Mashile Antonio David Lyons Leleti Khumalo Kgomotso Seitshohlo Lerato Mokgotho Lennox Matharathe Mothusi Magano Noxolo Maqashalala Thulani Nyembe Simo Mogwaza Merriam Ngomani Harriet Manamela Roberto Citran Mduduze Maraso

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Paul Rusesabagina Tatiana Rusesabagina Colonel Oliver Jack Dube David Pat Archer General Augustin Bizimungo George Gregoire Paul's Daughter Paul's Daughter Roger Rusesabagina Policeman Receptionist Jean-Jacques Head Chief Old Guard Odette Thomas Fedens Anais Carine Peter Benedict Chloe the Prostitute Jean Baptiste Hutu Captain Gregoire's Girlfriend Alice the Waitress Priest Hutu Lieutenant

The Crew Directed by Terry George Written by Keir Pearson & Terry George Produced by Terry George and A Kitman Ho Original Music by Jerry 'Wonder' Duplessis/Rupert Gregson-Williams/Andrea Guerra Cinematography by Robert Fraisse Film Editing by Naomi Geraghty Casting by Richard Pagano Production Design by Johnny Breedt & Tony Burrough Art Direction by Emma MacDevitt Set Decoration by Estelle Ballack Costume Design by Ruy Filipe Production Manager Rwanda Oorlagh George Run Time 121 minutes Rated M15+ [AUST] Copyright ©2005 - MGM/UA - All Rights Reserved Copyright Protected © 2005 - Impact Internet Services & The Movie Pages - All Rights Reserved