Hotel Rwanda

Terry George centres the film on Paul Rusesabagina, manager of the Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali. The Belgian airline Sabena built that hotel in 1973 and still owned it during the genocide; 1,268 people sheltered inside, largely protected by that corporate link. His instruments are a company phone line to Brussels, the bar stock and name lists bargained one at a time. The real hotel was never used. After location work in Kigali the production moved to Johannesburg, where an empty hospital became the Mille Collines. Almost all of the killing is kept outside the frame, and the picture went out with a PG-13 in the United States. Nick Nolte’s colonel is a composite of Roméo Dallaire, the real UNAMIR commander, renamed and lowered in rank. Dallaire’s own verdict was blunt: “The artificiality of Hollywood knows no boundaries.” The film took the audience award at Toronto and drew three Academy Award nominations: Don Cheadle in a leading role, Sophie Okonedo in a supporting role, and the original screenplay by Keir Pearson and Terry George. It lost all three. A good fit if you want a crisis carried by phone calls, visa lists and what one manager can trade. Not for anyone who will read Nolte’s colonel as the historical Dallaire, or who expects the killing to be shown.