When the world closed its eyes, he opened his arms.

It seems inconceivable that atrocities on the scale of those in this film could ever be allowed to happen, but they did and, basically, the rest of the world looked away. The outrage occurred in 1994 when members of the Hutu tribe in Rwanda carried out a 100-day campaign of annihilation against members of the Tutsi tribe and massacred one million people. It may be indicative of the West’s politically enfeebled response to this when, near the end of the film, an official is interviewed on radio and is clumsily reluctant to use the word, “genocide” in describing the bloodbath. Hotel Rwanda personalises the shameful event by centring on a single story – that of a man called Paul Rusesabagina, played by Don Cheadle who has been rightfully lauded for his superperformance.