HOTEL RWANDA Wins Audience Award at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival
by Andre Soares
Based on the true story of a hotel manager who saved hundreds of lives during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda has won the People’s Choice award at the Toronto Film Festival. Pete Travis’s Omagh, the story of the relatives of victims of the bloodiest terrorist attack of Northern Ireland’s 30-year conflict, won the festival’s Discovery award, given out by attending journalists.
In My Father’s Den, a New Zealand film about a war journalist who returns to his isolated hometown, won the FIPRESCI prize given by a jury to an emerging filmmaker. The comedy It’s All Gone Pete Tong and the horror film White Skin won the Canadian film prizes.
While the world looked away, approximately 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were massacred during the spring and early summer of 1994. Hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina, played by Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda, saved the lives of those hiding in his hotel by bribing military officers with cash, liquor, and other goods.
With its Toronto win (and its now well-publicized Schindler’s List similarities), Hotel Rwanda has received a good push on the road to the Oscars. About half of Toronto’s People’s Choice winners have gone on to receive important Academy Award nominations (and wins), among them The Official Story, Women on the Verge of Nervous Breakdown, Shine, American Beauty, Life Is Beautiful, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
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