That helped me to stay calm in that madness."Instead of tending to the whims of European tourists (who were soon evacuated), he struggled to keep more than 1,000 people alive in a war zone. "I had to feed those people every day," he says, "yet the water was cut off and we could not go out to get food." He filled the swimming pool with drinking water and rationed its use, and smuggled in food from a nearby market.Meanwhile, Rwanda's power brokers continued to visit the hotel. Rusesabagina would entertain these men, metres from where terrified Tutsis were hiding. Hotel Rwanda documents Rusesabagina's three-month struggle to keep the Interahamwe out of the place. During that period, 80 per cent of the country's Tutsi population was wiped out."If there is a secret to how I succeeded in keeping those people safe, it was that I did not change in any way," he says in perfect English - one of the five languages he speaks "I remained the hotel manager I went to my office every day I made sure there were enough supplies. As a result, he was ordered to kill her and their four children.

However, he managed to negotiate a bribe with the militia leader in exchange for their lives. He and his family then fled to the Milles Collines, where the presence of Western tourists afforded them some protection. Within days, every Tutsi in Kigali knew that their best chance of survival was at the hotel and it was soon overflowing. Alongside Cheadle and Okonedo, he has been giving interviews all day.

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Dressed in a pink blazer, he laughs easily and fields my questions in a soft, measured voice. "How did I save those people? Well, first of all, I did not save anyone, I just helped," he says.Despite being made the "hero" of a major film, Rusesabagina remains resolutely modest about his remarkable role during the atrocities. When I ask him how he feels being compared to Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who saved 1,100 Jews from the Nazi gas chambers, he simply says: "If Oskar Schindler had only had to stay strong for 100 days to save those people, as I did, I would agree with you But he went through it for five years.

He was a very brave man."Rusesabagina's ordeal began three days into the genocide when the Interahamwe Hutu militia arrived at his home in Kigali He is a Hutu, but his wife, Tatiana, is a Tutsi. Rusesabagina, 50, is here to take part in the film's press junket. He rises to greet me, shakes my hand and tells me to sit wherever I feel most comfortable. It is immediately obvious why this son of Rwandan farmers rose to become manager of one of Africa's top hotels, the Milles Collines. His charm is perfectly pitched, instantly putting you at your ease. It was this same charm that made the Milles Collines a destination for both the Rwandan elite and European tourists. And it was also what enabled Rusesabagina to save the lives of more than 1,000 people during the Rwandan genocide in 1994.A decade after 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in 100 days by Hutu militiamen, the story of how Rusesabagina sheltered 1,200 Tutsis in his four-star hotel has been made into a film. Hotel Rwanda, starring Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo and Nick Nolte, received three Oscar nominations last month and, soon afterwards, a British distributor.