Mads Brügger

Subversive satirist Mads Brugger’s latest is an odd-couple comedy about the pitfalls of striking out into the economic frontier; it charts two hapless Danes’ scheme to sell Saint Bernards to China’s rising middle class.Read More »

Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), September 18th, 1961. Swedish Dag Hammarskjöld mysteriously dies in a plane crash. Decades later, Danish journalist and filmmaker Mads Brügger and Swedish researcher Göran Björkdahl investigate the case looking for a definitive closure, but instead they discover much more than the killing of Secretary-General to the United Nations.Read More »

A witty and controversial documentary from Zentropa, which won the SUNDANCE World Cinema Jury Prize in 2010.

Quote:
A journalist with no scruples and two Danish/Korean comedians—one a self-proclaimed “spastic”—travel to North Korea under the guise of a cultural exchange. On the pretext of being a small Danish theatre group, named The Red Chapel, they are allowed into the country, but unbeknownst to the North Koreans, cultural exchange is not really what they have in mind. Mads Brügger, the journalist; Simon, the straight man; and Jacob, the spastic, use humor to challenge one of the world’s most notorious regimes. The troupe rehearse under the watchful eye of government officials brought in to “collaborate” on their performance and make it more palatable for the Korean regime. They are shown the important historical sights by a female government employee, who smothers poor Jacob with motherly affection.Read More »

An enigmatic and decadent white diplomat arrives in central Africa sporting dark glasses, riding boots, and a cigarette holder. He has recently bought an ambassadorship and claims to be a do-good rich businessman spearheading a diplomatic mission. Officially, he is there to start a factory that will employ locals to produce matches. Unofficially, he has really come to gain access to the area’s vast reserves of diamonds. It soon becomes apparent that, in this postcolonial economy, nearly everyone is out to rip off everyone else, and the dangers become all too real.Read More »