Director: Mads Brügger
Producer: Peter Engel, Andreas Rocksen, Bjarte M. Tveit
Editor: Nicolás Norgaard Staffolani
Cinamatographer: Tore Vollan
Cold Case Hammarskjöld
Wisconsin Premiere • documentary • Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium • 2019 • DCP • English, French with English subtitles • 128 MIN
section: New International Documentaries
A murder investigation leads down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, only to come out the other side with revelations far more startling and wide-reaching than anyone expected. In 1961, UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld's plane crashed under mysterious circumstances in Africa. Fifty years later, documentarian Mads Brügger (Red Chapel, WFF 2011) takes up the case, doggedly tracking down rumors of international spy agencies and chasing stray clues from yellowed documents. Like Werner Herzog or Nick Broomfield, Brügger is a slyly amusing documentary showman, but as he digs deeper, his mischievous humor recedes into the background, along with the case he's ostensibly investigating. By the end, Brügger has uncovered harrowing evidence of institutionalized white supremacy in Africa. A murder mystery that exposes a genocide, Cold Case Hammarskjöld massively raises the stakes on the true-crime documentary genre. "Sucks you in like a vortex… a singular experience that counts as one of the most honestly disturbing and provocative nonfiction films in years. It's a movie that should be seen, grappled with, argued with, and experienced, because the questions it plants in us are dark enough to reverberate as powerfully as answers" (Variety). Best Director: World Cinema Documentary, 2019 Sundance Film Festival. (MK)