One of the Best Ever

Rating: 10/10 (8 August 2006)

Films don't get much more powerful than this riveting story of a man who saved 1,000 lives during the devastating genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Director Terry George wisely lets the story and brilliant acting by Oscar-nominated Don Cheadle as Hutu hotel owner Paul Rusesabagina and Sophie Okonedo as his Tutsi wife do the talking. See Hotel Rwanda, not just because you'll be viewing one of the best films of 2004. Go see it as an act of penance, for our collective sin of omission, as a reminder not to be indifferent.
"In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. ... Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten," said Nobel Prize-winner Elie Wiesel. "Not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope, is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own."