Immaculée Ilibagiza is as beautiful inside as she is out.

The model-perfect skin, the sweeping eyelashes, the beatific smile all jump off the screen in "Left to Tell," a documentary follow-up to her book of the same name.

That's only what's apparent onscreen. Turn up the volume and hear Ilibagiza talk about Rwanda, and you know these external traits pale in comparison to what she's been through — and how she's changed because of it. This week she is in Honolulu for two public appearances.

In 1994, then a college student, Ilibagiza returned home for Easter and soon after found herself enmeshed in a horrible ordeal when the death of the Hutu president of Rwanda sparked a massacre of Tutsis.

A neighbor, a Hutu pastor, took her into his house and hid her in a recently added bathroom along with seven other women. They would hide there for 91 days, under constant fear as soldiers pounded on the pastor's door, demanding to search the house again and again.

A large chest had been pushed against the bathroom door to keep them from view, but they could hear the shouts and sounds of violence just outside. The women made it through the months-long genocide, unlike two of Ilibagiza's brothers and both her parents, all slain in the massacre.

Conditions inside the bathroom were unimaginable: They were hungry, sometimes going days without food; it was hard to sleep, with just two mattresses, including one in the shower; they had to stay quiet, only able to flush the toilet when someone else in the house did.

And cramped? She held a younger girl on her lap part of the time, though now she jokes about how they all lost a lot of weight, so that helped with the tight quarters.

But her voice grows quiet when asked about the sounds of the massacre outside the house, worrying what was happening to those she loved. Add that to the fear of being discovered during the raids — they wondered, "Will they miss me again?" — as well as the threat of death to the pastor and his family if the women were found.

She describes that fear as "a thousand needles going through you. Nobody's touching you, but there's pain every second. ... That's the ultimate pain you can feel."

Such pain drowns out other discomforts, she said, overwhelming the senses and helping the human mind block out hunger pangs, body aches, minutiae. Ilibagiza doesn't remember ever noticing the smells of the other women, going through menses or sweating without a shower.

"There must've been smells, but we never paid attention to that," she said.

Such pain is enough to make someone hard and pinched. Yet Ilibagiza is neither. She chose to forgive those who perpetrated such evil against her and the people she loved.

In one part of the documentary, Ilibagiza returns to Rwanda and meets a young Hutu soldier who was among those in the death squads. Onscreen, he is hesitant but drawn to the cameras. She beckons him near so he could be in the same frame in the camera, in a voice a kindergarten teacher might use on the first day of school, soothing and gentle. It's a powerful moment that exemplified the forgiveness she embodies toward all who injured her family.

It makes sense that she's held up as the poster woman for forgiveness. (See box, front page.)

"People who hate have so much pain," she said. "... As a Catholic, you think about Christ at Calvary, the pain you have to suffer."

The path to forgiveness started with a wish, she said. She prayed to God for help and looked to Christ's example on the cross for coping with the physical and emotional horrors: "He said to forgive them, Father, they know not what they do," said Ilibagiza. "I thought, 'Yes. They did not know what they do.' "

And since she chose to forgive, her life only got better. She left Rwanda to work at the United Nations, married, had children, wrote a book. She's been honored, a documentary was made from her book, and she's been featured on "60 Minutes."

"Many good things have happened to me since the book came out," she said, marveling at the change in tide. "Hillary Clinton told me she read my book. I've met the president, many other people. I met Brad Pitt. I had an award presented by Matt Damon."

Yes, she'll admit, one can get a bit starstruck, especially over the last two: "They are all cute, cute, cute in person. And so kind! Look where I am coming from, and oh my!"

But what really makes her content to her toes is to know that people are hearing her message of forgiveness and transforming their own lives. Fans tell her how they are following her example to remove their own heavy burdens by choosing to forgive.

And she's grateful, too: Some tell her how they pray for her beloved brothers.