Paul Rusesabagina is the hotel manager at the fancy Les Milles Collines hotel in Kigali. And Paul is a Hutu, and a very successful businessman who smoothly greases the wheels, making powerful connections in all strata of Rwandan life. His most pressing concern is to ensure the continuation of the hotel’s four-star service for his largely European guests.
Paul’s wife Tatiana is a Tutsi. She urges Paul to use his influence to help local Tutsis, who are being harassed and beaten with increasing frequency, but Paul will only use the political capital he's built up to help his own family, if and when they need it. Soon enough, the violence escalates, and the Hutus begin their genocide of the Tutsis. European guests and staff at the hotel are flown out of the country, and Paul is left in charge.
He finds that his conscience won't allow him to watch as the innocent are slaughtered. As several hundred Tutsi whose own homes have been torched, approach the hotel and ask for refuge, Paul bribes the commanding General of the Hutu militia with scotch, beer and cash, and finally admits the Tutsi. Before long, the hotel has become a well-appointed refugee camp. Paul is seen as a traitor by some, putting his life in danger, and the predicament of his "guests" grows more precarious every day, but despite good intentions on the part of a journalist and a UN peacekeeping colonel, the rest of the world is not eager to intervene and stop the massacre.