Hotel Rwanda and Philip Gourevitch

The horror of the Rwandan genocide is set against one man's courage in the film, Hotel Rwanda. Don Cheadle gives the finest performance of his career as Paul Rusesabagi, the hotel manager who shelters and ultimately saves more than a thousand Tutsis and moderate Hutus from the violence that descended on the African nation in 1994. Hotel Rwanda, which is a true story, provides only a snap-shot of the cruelty and violence, which resulted in the deaths of more than 800,000 Rwandans.

To complement a viewing of this film, I recommend reading Philip Gourevitch's 1998 account, We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. Gourevitch won the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction. It is a balanced and insightful--and haunting--account of the genocide.