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Top US Actors To Film Rwanda Movie In SA Hollywood stars Nick Nolte, Joaquin Phoenix and Don Cheadle are to film a movie in South Africa. The three will join London-based Sophie Okonedo, who was so powerful in the recent film Dirty Pretty Things, and several South African actors in filming Hotel Rwanda, a movie that is set against the backdrop of the Rwandan genocide. The local actors include Sarafina! star Leleti Khumalo, Mothusi Magano of Gums and Noses and the crowd-pleasing Desmond Dube. Filming will take place in Johannesburg and Alexandra. This week, Cheadle — who starred in Ocean's 11 — said he was excited about the movie. The actor, who is already in the country, said: "I see many scripts every year and most of them are dreck. If I'm lucky two or three have genuine quality and two of those usually go to Will Smith. "But this is a love story and a thriller that will keep audiences entertained. Too many films try too hard to educate the audience and that's a turn-off. "This is a story with real-life lessons and emotional situations we can all recognise, but it sweeps you up into a drama that makes you understand the truth of what happened in Rwanda and the evolution of that tragedy." Director Terry George, who made In the Name of the Father, said he wanted to make a film that "conveyed the hopelessness, fear and frustration" of African wars. "Rwanda was Africa's Holocaust and most people have no idea what really happened there," he said. "The Western world has this strange blind spot about Africa. People really just want to see beautiful animals and happy children running after them. "When something goes wrong they shift their gaze as if to say 'It's just another pair of tribes slaughtering each other again' and they look the other way. "I was looking for a story about Liberia or Sierra Leone, but then I found this true story about Paul Rusesabagina, who strove to keep his own family safe during the Rwanda genocide. He ended up caring for over 2000 people, some of them members of the Tutsi elite who were prime targets of the Hutu assault. Not one person under his care died in the conflict." Those are the powerful dramatic elements that enabled George to find financing for the film in South Africa, Italy and Britain, but he has another clear motive in view. "I want to shame audiences by showing them what really happened and how little they understood it. "Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world don't know that the Hutus and Tutsis were never clearly defined rival tribes until the Belgian colonialists came. They created a separation between the tribes on the 'divide and rule' principle and that lay at the heart of what happened in 1994. "I also plan to expose how the United Nations simply castrated the UN troops on the ground. Nick Nolte plays the UN commander whose force could have halted the conflict in the first month, but he was ordered by the UN not to do anything and it escalated into the fastest genocide in modern history. I want the audience to see that and feel the shame of it." George has been working in close collaboration with the real Paul Rusesabagina to ensure the story is accurate. Some preliminary shooting was done in Rwanda in December. The director is also using the large number of Rwandans who live in Pretoria as extras and advisers on the film. Apart from the director of photography and the editor, everyone else in the crew is South African. There is a significant South African investment in this film although the producers refused to be specific about amounts. However, they confirmed that between 35% to 45% of the total budget will be spent in South Africa. |