Tear Jerker / Hotel Rwanda

• The entire movie, but especially when the Rwandan orphans are left behind by their caretakers, who are evacuated from the country.
  • The scene that really struck a chord was when the foreign internationals were being evacuated out of the hotel, especially Joaquin Phoenix's reaction of, "Christ, I feel so ashamed." When the priests and nuns and foreign aid workers arrive with all the Rwandan refugees,they are told the refugees had to be left behind. This is helped by a fantastic score.
• The journalist taking what little money he had and shoving it into the hand of the young woman he'd become enamored of, because there was simply nothing else that he could do, then walking away with his cameraman, practically weeping with disgust and shame at himself.
  • It's a blink-and-you-miss moment, but before the aforementioned scene, the journalist's black cameraman is stopped at the entrance by a UN Peacekeeper, who only lets him pass when the cameraman has shown his passport. Of course, none of the white foreigners being evacuated are subject to this, yet again underscoring the West's racism and general uncaring attitude toward the unfolding slaughter.
• The foreign internationals being evacuated and the Rwandans forced to stay at the hotel staring at each other helplessly as the buses carrying the former drives away leaving the latter to a grisly fate.
• Another particularly haunting line is when a Red Cross worker tearfully recalls how the militia made her watch as they butchered children, and how one little girl looked at her and said, "Please don't let them kill me. I promise I won't be Tutsi any more". The girl got killed anyway.
• Not to mention when Colonel Oliver finds out from his superior officers the UN peacekeepers aren't going to be protecting the refugees or helping them escape, and, filled with rage and shame, he tells a stunned Paul why:
  Colonel Oliver: You're black! Hell, you're not even a nigger. You're an African. They're not gonna stay, Paul. They're not gonna stop the slaughter.
• Paul finding the road to be littered with the bodies of hundreds of Tutsi and Hutu refugees. He soon suffers a complete Heroic BSoD as he is momentarily shellshocked by the bloodbath raging around him.
• Paul's son Roger is found hiding outside his home, covered in blood and traumatized beyond words as he had left to check on his friend who lived next door. Initially we are led to believe Roger has been attacked, only to find out the blood is not his; cut to morning and we see that his friend was murdered along with the rest of his family, their bodies strewn outside their burning house.
• The fact that like so many others to have been slaughtered, the fates of Tatiana's brother and his wife have never been determined, only that they almost certainly did not survive the carnage.
• That haunting tune sung by the children:
  Ni dyar'izuba, Rizagaruka, Hejuru yacu
  Ni nduzaricyeza ricyeza
  • Translation:
  When will the sun return above us?
  Who will reveal it once again to us?