Director in person for Q&A at both screenings!

Filmmaker-cum-diplomat Mads Brügger puts himself in the center of a narrative maze involving the purchase of diplomatic immunity, a match factory run by pygmies, a hunt for diamonds, and the infinite advantages of being a white diplomat in postcolonial Africa. The consummate agent provocateur— his method has fittingly been described as “Graham Greene meets Borat”—Brügger shocks and entertains by using roleplaying and hidden cameras to expose an awful truth. In embracing his character—a chain-smoking, boot-wearing, eccentric diplomat circa 1970—the filmmaker embodies the powers that continue to ruthlessly exploit and abuse all aspects of life in the mineral-rich Central African Republic. One absurd situation after another reveals, with queasy, morbid humor, the complexity of the collusion between old and new masters to maintain the grotesque circumstances of corruption. Thank you to the Danish Film Institute.