9 Best Movies Set in or About Rwanda

9 Movies Set in or About Rwanda

Foreign-led films whose sustained setting or subject remains centered on Rwanda.

1. 

   1. Hotel Rwanda

   2004

   As genocide engulfs Rwanda in 1994, the manager of a Kigali luxury hotel uses cunning, bribery, and nerve to shelter more than a thousand terrified Tutsi refugees within its walls. Based on the true story of Paul Rusesabagina, a harrowing, humane drama.

2. 

   2. Sometimes in April

   2005

   Two Rwandan brothers on opposite sides of the divide are pulled apart by the 1994 genocide, and years later one confronts the trauma and guilt of those hundred terrible days. Raoul Peck's sweeping, sober drama.

3. 

   3. Shake Hands with the Devil

   2007

   Based on his own memoir, this drama follows Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian general commanding the overwhelmed UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda, as he watches helplessly and heroically while the world abandons the country to genocide. A searing war drama.

4. 

   4. A Sunday in Kigali

   Un dimanche à Kigali · 2006

   A middle-aged Canadian journalist making a documentary in Kigali falls in love with a young Tutsi waitress just as the genocide erupts, and races to protect her amid the slaughter. A wrenching wartime romance.

5. M

   5. My Neighbor, My Killer

   2009

   Filmed over years, this documentary follows Rwanda's community-based Gacaca courts, where survivors of the genocide must face — and sometimes forgive — the very neighbors who murdered their families. A profound study of justice and reconciliation.

6. 

   6. 100 Days

   2001

   One of the first dramatizations of the Rwandan genocide, this film follows a young Tutsi couple torn apart as a hundred days of slaughter engulf their community, and a girl who takes shelter in a church that offers no safety. A harrowing drama.

7. 

   7. Small Country: An African Childhood

   Petit Pays · 2020

   A ten-year-old boy living a comfortable, carefree life in Burundi sees his world unravel as ethnic violence and the genocide in neighboring Rwanda engulf his family and community. A tender, wrenching coming-of-age drama.

8. 

   8. Trees of Peace

   2021

   Four women from very different backgrounds hide together in a cramped space during the Rwandan genocide, forging an unbreakable sisterhood to survive the horror outside. A tense, intimate drama.

9. 

   9. Birds Are Singing in Kigali

   Ptaki śpiewają w Kigali · 2017

   As genocide rages in Rwanda, a Polish ornithologist rescues the traumatized daughter of a murdered colleague and brings her to Europe, where the two damaged women struggle with survival and grief. A stark, haunting drama.