I'm toying with the idea of hosting a showing of Hotel Rwanda for our middle school students. It would be a great wrap-up of our World Vision 30 Hour Famine and our series on the Beatitudes. I haven't even run it by my parent team or staff, but I thought I'd run it by you to see what you all think.
The movie goes back to an event ten years ago when some of the worst atrocities in the history of mankind took place in the country of Rwanda--and in an era of high-speed communication and round the clock news, the events went almost unnoticed by the rest of the world. In only three months, one million people were brutally murdered. In the face of these unspeakable actions, inspired by his love for his family, an ordinary man summons extraordinary courage to save the lives of over a thousand helpless refugees, by granting them shelter in the hotel he manages.
It's PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, and brief strong language. I figured the watchdogs over at Focus on the Family would be the best representative of the most freaked out parent. They said this...
"Gut-wrenching and intense, but restrained in its depiction if one applies the standard of today's gory war movies. Hundreds of dead bodies are seen littering yards and streets, but the camera takes no joy in recording their forms, and it makes a strict point of not watching too closely as people are killed. A journalist's television footage (shot from a distance) shows victims being hacked at with machetes. Machine-gun fire mows down crowds of people. Scores of homes are burned to the ground. Explosions and gunfire turn the city into what one Hutu gleefully refers to as a graveyard. Blood flies when a man is struck in the mouth. Paul and Tatiana's young son is found covered in blood (not his own). Hutu soldiers rough up captives by hitting, kicking and striking them with their guns. One soldier puts a gun to Paul's head. Another is shot in the chest at close range. Women stripped of their clothes are seen caged in a pen (briefly, and in the dark).A journalist blurts the f-word. There are a half-dozen s-words, and God's name is attached to "d--n" once. There are also a small handful of milder profanities."
Any thoughts on if I should show the movie, how to show the movie, who to approach parents, and hoow to debrief it? Maybe you or a friend have showed it to students, what was that experience like? Any possible alternatives to this movie?