10 Based On True Story Movies That Never Happened
5. Hotel Rwanda Tells A Hero's Story That's Disputed By Many Rwandan Survivors
Nobody with a functioning sense of decency is going to dispute that the 1994 Rwandan genocide happened, but the events of the 2004 Oscar-winning drama Hotel Rwanda are a whole lotta hooey.
The film revolves around Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle), a Rwandan hotelier who sheltered his family and 1,000 other refugees inside his hotel during the genocide, saving their lives.
It's a devastating, deftly crafted work of cinema, but in the years that followed several books were published that heavily disputed the story, and Rusesabagina's heroism in particular.
Accounts of more than 70 people who stayed in Rusesabagina's hotel insist he extorted guests for money, cut off phone communications to the hotel, and disseminated a list of refugees' names and hotel room numbers to various external parties, risking their safety.
In 2014, several UN peacekeeping members heavily downplayed Rusesabagina's role in saving lives, with Captain Amadou Deme even saying, "I can testify that I personally was not able to watch [Hotel Rwanda] beyond a point as I found it so repulsive for its untruthfulness."
Just recently, Rusesabagina was convicted of terrorism charges and sentenced to 25 years in prison, though given that he's been vocally critical of the Rwandan dictatorship, that's hardly an emphatic further indictment of his character.