Hotel Rwanda

Possibly one of the most inspiring, gut-wrenching, soul-destroying-but at the same time in a sort of way-life-affirming movies I have ever seen.

The first thing about this movie is that it is so confronting, at the beginning of the movie a lot of the surroundings look similar to what I would know, the houses look very modern, the hotel featured in the hotel is really top notch.
And then it all goes very ugly.

I personally knew about the genocide that happened in Rwanda, to a very little extent. I didn't know that roughly eight hundred thousand to a million people were killed brutally in such a short time span. And the weirdest thing is that it happened during my lifetime.

The acting was magnificent, I don't really think that there was a fault there at all. I think that the real success of this movie, unfortunately, was based on that fact that this IS a true story, that all those people died, countries that could have helped more just didn't do enough, and that in the end the world was left with this stark picture of destruction, desolation and despair.

The only problem with this movie, and it is a positive problem in a way, is that as soon as you've finished watching it, the only thing you'll want to do is to do something, help in someway, find out as much as you can.

In some ways one can take solace in the fact that Rwanda was able to build past it, and build themselves a better country. I remember about 10 years ago it was declared one of the worlds most, if not THE most, dangerous country in the world, and now it is one of the safer countries in Central East Africa. And it is also the only country to be declared mine free in the region. But we should never forget what happened there.