The Representation of Rwandan Genocide in The Film Hotel Rwanda

‘Hotel Rwanda’ is a movie released in 2004, showing the events of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide viewed by hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina. Romeo Dallaire, head of the United Nation’s Mission in Rwanda criticizes how the movie portrayed the genocide in its accuracy of events. He criticized how the filmmaker could “produce junk like that” and believed its “only value” is “that it keeps the Rwandan genocide alive”.

Dallaire experienced the genocide and completely understands the brutality involved. This is one of his criticisms as in the movie “the story is skewed”. The movie doesn’t capture the extreme violence and brutality of the genocide as an anonymous woman who survived the genocide recalls that “100 men or more who raped me”. The movie undermines horrors like this as it is only rated ‘PG-13’ to increase viewers for more money rather than historical accuracy. The movie also only shows the view of events from Rusesabagina and doesn’t include the views of victims of the genocide who could’ve provided a better understanding of what actually happened which would’ve increased the historical accuracy of the film.

The heroic portrayal of Rusesabagina suffered serious criticism by genocide survivors who were in the hotel in 1994 saying that Rusesabagina wasn’t helping Tutsis out of kindness but for his own financial gain as Mwenenganucye, who was the receptionist of the hotel “accused Rusesabagina of kicking out refugees who failed to pay their bills”. Another account from survivor Kayihura recalls that Rusesabagina didn’t care or want the refugees in his hotel as “Rusesabagina made with the UN peacekeepers was a written request to remove the Tutsi refugees from the hotel” and “Under Rusesabagina, only those who had money could go to the hotel restaurant and get food”. These accounts back Dallaire’s view that the movie is historically inaccurate show inaccuracy of Hotel Rwanda’s portrayal of Paul Rusesabagina that he is not heroic and only wanted money from the Tutsis seeking help in a crisis. This means the audience don’t receive an accurate account of the genocide or what happened in the hotel from the movie.

Despite its criticism Hotel Rwanda is historically accurate in some ways as even though the numbers were exaggerated that there were 1200 people sheltered in the hotel, there were a lot of people whose lives were saved by taking refuge in the hotel from the militia. Although the movie doesn’t capture the same brutality as the genocide itself for example, the use of machete to hack people to death but it does accurately give the viewer an idea of the massacre that took place when Rusesabagina falls out of the van onto the dead bodies pile in the fog which matches pictures taken at the time of the genocide to represent the 800,000 people dead.

To conclude, the movie doesn’t quite show the dark tone of the genocide as it only shows the dead bodies instead of how innocent people were brutally killed. Also, the movie doesn’t show what the survivors felt and their thoughts of the genocide as the movie only focuses on Rusesabagina’s view of events. The movie is also widely criticized for its historical inaccuracy which is why Dallaire believes it ‘Hollywood junk’ and why it doesn’t represent the genocide correctly.

Bibliography

• George Terry, ‘Hotel Rwanda’, MGM Home Entertainment Inc, Film, (2005)
• Joshua Ostroff, ‘Romeo Dallaire: Senator Slams 'Hotel Rwanda' Film As Revisionist 'Junk'’, Huffington Post, Interview Article, (2011)
• Ivan R. Mugisha, ‘What really happened inside Hotel Rwanda?’, The New Times, Newspaper Article, (2014)