Drafthouse Films is releasing The Ambassador on VOD today (in advance of a theatrical release in New York, LA, and Austin at the end of this month), and boy does this look f*cking nuts. From Danish filmmaker Mads Brügger and Lars Von Trier’s production house, Zentropa, it sounds just about exactly like what would happen if you let Lars Von Trier direct Borat. If you thought Sacha Cohen was nuts for gay-baiting gun-toting Alabamans, try watching Danish filmmaker Mads Brügger attempt to procure suitcases full of blood diamonds from officials in the Central African Republic, some of whom may or may not end up getting assassinated by the end of the movie.
“I want to show an Africa stripped of NGOs, Bono, child soldiers and kids with bloated bellies, to show the kind of people you never see in the documentaries: white businessmen and diplomats, the fat cats in the urban centers, all the people who are in post-colonial French Africa having a great time,” Brügger said.
Brügger attempts this by posing as a businessman named Cortzen, designing a matchbook factory. Here’s an excerpt from ThePlaylist‘s review:
Traveling to the CAR, Cortzen begins to glad-hand in the richest areas of the impoverished territory, sharing morally-questionable Hitler jokes with tropical shirt-wearing power brokers, and giving astoundingly terrible speeches — in one moment, he selects a not-very-memorable quote from General Patton to excite a group of poor children whom have already been given alcohol by their parents and guardians. Cortzen ends up so far immersed in this world he begins to refer to himself as a “white albino,” all the while, two troubling truths linger: one, he is not who he says he is, and two, the bribery-fueled paperwork powering his consulate application has yet to go through.
Holy hell, the only thing I love more than morally-questionable Hitler jokes is drunken children! It’s like they backed a van up to my wheelhouse and took everything! This could be the nuttiest Danish film since Gayni**ers from Outer Space. Danes, man. They make the Dutch look like the Swiss.
[via TheFilmStage, BadassDigest]