Cold Case Hammarskjold
Dir. Mads Brügger / Dur. 128 mins / Country. Denmark-Norway-Sweden-Belgium
Festival Strand:- Documentary Competition
In A Nutshell:- UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold was killed in a plane crash. It was listed as an accident but was something much more sinister at work?
The Good:- Mads Brugger is a documentarian in a similar vein to that of Nick Broomfield, Louis Theroux or Jon Ronson. He’s not afraid to go down the rabbit hole of potentially contentious or dangerous subjects but does so with humour and the engaging appeal of a showman. It’s a fascinating topic, starting off as an investigation into a long since abandoned cold case, long suspected but never proved to be a murder, before veering off into truly horrific and terrifying territory. It’s a complex, confusing and densely layered tale, engagingly shot and told.
The Bad:-At one point, I questioned the point of one of the framing devices but when the film itself then brings up these questions, it's hard to really count that as bad point.
The Verdict:- Admittedly only four films in but this is a highlight of the festival already and exactly the sort of film I was hoping to discover. It’s definitely going on the Best of The Fest list and I highly recommend this one if you get a chance to watch it.
The Venue / Intro / Q&A:- The screening took place at the Curzon Soho - a cinema I realised that I hadn’t been to since 2009 when I hired it for a screening of my own film, incidental Weekend. Time is a harsh mistress…
Brugger was there for the intro and Q&A. In his intro, he stated that the most important organ in the human body is, of course, the bladder and so he endeavours to keep his documentaries to 90 minutes. He has failed with this one - fortunately, it was gripping enough that the bladder didn't even get a look in. Having written last time about the pitfalls of Q&As, I actually felt the urge to ask something for the first time and got my question answered! Hopefully, I didn't fall into any of those pitfalls and wasn't an absolute bellend. I have to say that this was one of the best Q&As that I've been to as, given the amount of stuff that is thrown at you in this doc, everyone had lots of questions and Brugger was more than happy to expand on most of them (the exception naturally being “what were you told when a subject asked you to stop recording?”)
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