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Hotel service
A filmmaker and a courageous hotelier turn the Rwandan genocide into a wake-up call for the world
BY TAMARA WIEDER

SITTING WITH Paul Rusesabagina, you don’t get the immediate sense that you’re in the company of a hero. On the face of things, Rusesabagina is a smiling, soft-spoken, and altogether unassuming presence. But listen to his story, and the truth emerges. Watch Hotel Rwanda, based on that story, and it becomes inarguable: Paul Rusesabagina is indeed a hero, and an incomprehensibly brave one at that.

The Rwandan genocide, which took the lives of nearly a million people over the course of 100 days in 1994, went virtually ignored by the rest of the world as the bloody events were taking place. As Hutu extremists murdered hundreds of thousands of their Tutsi neighbors, not a single country intervened with military force; even the United Nations reduced its peacekeeping presence in Rwanda to a mere 270 soldiers. Yet as Tutsis and their sympathizers were rounded up and killed, mostly by machete, Rusesabagina, general manager of the luxurious Hotel Milles Collines in Rwanda’s capital, took action, turning his hotel into a safe haven for the persecuted. With violence raging just outside the Milles Collines’ gates, Rusesabagina sheltered — and, ultimately, saved — more than 1200 people, often resorting to bribery to keep the Hutus at bay.

That’s all it took to convince director Terry George that Rusesabagina’s story was worth telling. After spending five days listening to the hotelier recount his experiences, George, acclaimed for writing such films as In the Name of the Father and The Boxer, set out to make Hotel Rwanda.

Q: When did you first become aware of Paul, and Paul’s story — and of what happened in Rwanda?

A: What happened in Rwanda I was aware of at the time, because I was working on a film in Ireland, and the Irish press and the British press, to a certain degree, covered it better than it was covered over here — but still didn’t quite get it. I had an interest in Africa because I wanted to write something about ordinary Africans and how they survived in these catastrophic events, and I was focusing on Liberia and the Liberian civil war. Then I read a script written by Keir Pearson, which was basically this story, and I talked to Keir, and persuaded him I could probably get it made, or try to get it made. And then I went over to Belgium and met Paul. I had In the Name of the Father and Some Mother’s Son and The Boxer with me. I gave him those tapes. Then, when we worked out an agreement that I’d try to get this made, I brought him back to Long Island and we sat down over the course of five days and went over all the details of this.

Q: What was that experience like?

A: Amazing, because there were two emotions. There was excitement, that I had the basis for what I thought would be a really fascinating, entertaining film, in the way that it’s a roller-coaster ride as a thriller, and also a romance. But also, as I got into it more, I started to get very nervous about a) whether I could get it made, and b) that I had better get this right. And that was really amplified when I went back to Rwanda with him, and just saw the devotion of people, stayed at the Milles Collines, saw what he pulled off, and then visited genocide sites, where the film became an obligation for me to do. So those were always the two competing emotions, and the nearer I got to the shoot, the more nervous I got about getting it right.

Q: How much of the process of making the film was about the artistic endeavor of filmmaking, and how much was about getting a message out?

A: I concentrated on the filmmaking, because I’d learned through the Irish films I’ve done that the best way to get a message out is not to try to send a message at all. Tell Paul’s story, and just let the backdrop, the canvas of the genocide, the abandonment by the West, speak for itself — the events of Paul’s story, particularly the thriller element of it, where every time he thinks he’s getting a break, the rug’s pulled out from underneath him, and yet his capacity to ride with that and go with it was amazing.

One of the things is you constantly hear people say is that it’s shocking, it’s really horrifying. And I think what that is, is our guilt about [the genocide]. Because there’s certainly nothing in the film that is horrifying.

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Issue Date: December 24 - 30, 2004
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