Connect with us

Retro IONCINEMA.com

2012 Sundance Predictions: Mads Brügger’s The Ambassador

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance back in 2010 for The Red Chapel, Mads Brügger pointed his GPS towards Central African Republic – where according to the filmmaker, poses as “the Man with the Yellow Hat gone bad” – the Curious George character but in the diamond trading mode. The Ambassador receives it world premiere by opening the IDFA later this month and it would logically make sense for him to continue the festival circuit showings by landing in Park City 8 weeks later with a slot opening in the World Cinema Documentary Competition.

#03. The Ambasador – Mads Brügger

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance back in 2010 for The Red Chapel, Mads Brügger pointed his GPS towards Central African Republic – where according to the filmmaker, poses as “the Man with the Yellow Hat gone bad” – the Curious George character but in the diamond trading mode. The Ambassador receives it world premiere by opening the IDFA later this month and it would logically make sense for him to continue the festival circuit showings by landing in Park City 8 weeks later with a slot opening in the World Cinema Documentary Competition.

Gist: A strange, enigmatic and decadent white diplomat arrives in central Africa, looking like a mixture of Henry Stanley and Karl Lagerfeld. He has recently bought an ambassadorship and claims to be a do-good rich business man, who has come to spearhead a diplomatic mission. Officially he is there to start a factory that produces matches – this, to employ locals and teach how to make this simple piece of fire-making equipment. Unofficially he is really there to gain access to vast reserves of diamonds. The Ambassador is a genre-breaking, tragic comedy about the bizarre world of African diplomacy.

Producer: Peter Engel
(IONCINEMA.com Preview Page // IMDB Link)

 
Continue Reading
Advertisement
You may also like...

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).

Click to comment

More in Retro IONCINEMA.com

To Top