We Come as Friends

Director Hubert Sauper in person for both screenings.

Hubert Sauper’s masterful exploration of modern colonialism, with war-ravaged Sudan as a focus, offers devastating insights into the most premeditated, casually insidious ways of taking possession of Africa today. The scenarios of clueless Texan missionaries, shallow UN case workers, and Chinese oil-company CEOs living in gated communities while polluting the local drinking water are like a collage of postcards from hell. It takes a particularly gifted filmmaker to construct from these horrors something that can also engage one’s sense of beauty; with an air of science fiction aided by otherworldly scenes captured from the self-manufactured flying machine in which Sauper and his co-pilot arrive in Africa, the documentarian has created an indelible and righteously alarming second film in a planned trilogy that began with the Oscar-nominated Darwin’s Nightmare.

Travel support provided by Unifrance