8. Hotel Rwanda (2004)
Fighting breaks out in Rwanda between rival ethnic groups - the Hutus and the Tutsis. Paul is a manager of a hotel and is a Hutu, his wife Tatiana is a Tutsi and this causes annoyance to Hutu extremists such as Georges who is the hotel goods supplier and also leader of the local Interahamwe - a Hutu extremist group who are slaughtering Tutsis. The violence intensifies and Paul is forced into bribery to protect his family. The neighbourhood is threatened by Hutu extremists and they end up fleeing to Paul's hotel along with various refugees, waifs and strays. Paul has to keep up a pretence of a swanky hotel whilst consoling its boarders and keeping strong for his family. UN peacekeeping forces arrive but are pretty useless because thy are unable by international law to have conflict with the Interahamwe. Foreign nationals are taken out of Rwanda but this still leaves lots of refugees and no cessation to the conflict. Eventually the UN try to evacuate a load of refugees - including Paul and his family but they are fired at and must return. Paul is at his wit's end. Eventually he tells the Rwandan Army General that if he doesn't let them leave he will report him as a war criminal. The convoy gets through the fighting and at the end it is revealed that Paul's actions saved over a thousand people from death. You cannot 'love' a film about the Rwandan genocide - it is simply too appalling to take on board the fact that 1 million people out of a population of 7 million were killed in a matter of months. And the world stood by and did nothing. Okay, Paul did a Schindler's list and rescued some people but it is only a small beacon of goodness in a glaring abyss of hatred and violence. Yes, we can laud his efforts but we can also see how the conflict turns ordinary men and women against each other. Approximately 200,000 people participated in the slaughter. In the face of such barbarism, Hotel Rwanda is a rather harrowing experience for the viewer which takes them from their living room and plonks them in the mid of one of the most ghastly genocides there has ever been. Far too disturbing to love.