Ghosts of Rwanda Review

              Ghosts of Rwanda is a documentary looking at the events of the Rwandan genocide and uses interviews from people who were there in Rwanda during the genocide as well as historians.  With this film, the experiences of people who aren’t as well-known as Paul Rusessebegina and Romeo Dallaire are able to tell their story of how they contributed to saving refugees in Rwanda. A lot of gruesome footage is shown of skeletal bodies lying on the floor in Rwanda without any burial, which leaves the viewer with a feeling of sadness and disgust that such an event could have happened without any international aid. There are many powerful stories in this film, such as the one from the one American left in Rwanda, who was able to save a group of orphans who were in hiding by sticking up to the leader of the Interhamwe and telling him he had to do something to save those children. This is very touching as beyond all odds, he was able to convince the person most likely responsible for the genocide, to not kill any of the children.                     

            As a documentary, Ghosts of Rwanda is a very informative and interesting film that provides a lot of information on the genocide and its effect on the people who were trying to help stop the genocide. There was also a story, where a girl must hid under dead bodies in a church to escape being noticed by the interhamwe and their dogs. This was already powerful enough, and then to add more there was footage of the church that she was hiding in, where there were just hundreds of dead children, men and women sprawled on the ground as skeletons. The filming in this documentary was very effective as most shots were medium shots or close ups to establish the person speaking about their experiences and because of little camera movement, we were able to focus more on what the person was saying than what they were doing. In conclusion, I think this is a very effective documentary on the genocide and it is very informative, I would recommend this film to anyone who has already seen Hotel Rwanda or Shake Hands with the Devil so they could learn more of the event. I am giving this film an 8/10 because it was a very effective documentary and I learned a lot of things I didn’t know already.