While the films made before 2004 have received comparatively little attention among audiences and in academia, they nevertheless laid the groundwork for an audiovisual historical media memory of the Rwandan genocide. However, in connection to the ten-year commemoration of the genocide in 2004–2005, three feature films and at least seventeen documentaries were produced and released. Of these twenty productions, six principal films reached wide audiences and contributed to put the genocide against the Tutsi in public con-sciousness on a global scale.

The feature films, Hotel Rwanda, Shooting Dogs, and Sometimes in April, and the three feature-length documentaries, Ghosts of Rwanda, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire, and Rwanda: Do Scars Ever Fade?, have been particularly noticed and examined to the extent that it would appear as if no other films on the subject existed. Hotel Rwanda grossed approximately US$34 million at box offices worldwide, and received three Academy Award Nominations and a further sixteen film awards, including several human rights recognitions. Add to that rentals and sales on DVD, frequent television broad-casts, and the regular use of the film as an audiovisual textbook to teach pupils about the genocide on a global scale, and Hotel Rwanda doubtless is the quintessential film on the Rwandan genocide. Edouard Kayihura and Kerry Zukas, authors of the harshly critical book Inside Hotel Rwanda: The Surprising True Story … And Why It Matters Today, even claim that Hotel Rwanda is the most seen, or even perhaps the only, film on Rwanda and/or Africa that American schoolchildren are shown during their entire education. This is however not entirely true; several films on Africa have been more commercially successful, for example Blood Diamond (2006) which grossed US$171 million worldwide, and there is even a more commercially successful film which takes place in Rwanda, Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey (1988), starring Sigourney Weaver, which grossed US$61 million worldwide. Nonetheless, Kayihura and Zukas's and others’ reaction to Hotel Rwanda demonstrates the assumed (and presuming negative) impact of the film, most probably because it is seen as the only film on the genocide against the Tutsi. Shooting Dogs was not as successful at the box office but has had a widespread release on television, DVD, and as an audiovisual teaching tool in schools.