Hotel Rwanda masses of refugees and militia to reach safety behind Tutsi rebel lines. The film is set in 1994 during the Rwandan Genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people, mainly Tutsi, were killed by Hutu extremists. During that year, Rwanda's population of seven million was composed of two major groups: Hutu (approximately 85%), and Tutsi (14%). In the early 1990s, Hutu extremists within Rwanda's political elite blamed the entire Tutsi minority population for the country's economic and political problems. Tutsi civilians were also accused of supporting a Tutsi-dominated rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. On 6 April 1994, a plane carrying
Rwanda Nziza under the presidencies of Gregoire Kayibanda and Juvénal Habyarimana, were marked by continued cycles of violence, culminating in the 1990s with the launch of the Rwandan Civil War by exiled Tutsi led by Paul Kagame, the assassination of President Habyarimana, and the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, in which between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu were killed by Hutu extremists, on the orders of the interim government, in the space of just 100 days. The genocide was ended when Kagame's rebel army took control of the country in July 1994. A period of reconciliation began, as a unity government