Mads Brügger goes for quite a ride in THE AMBASSADOR
THE AMBASSADOR (Mads Brügger, 2011)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Wednesday, August 29
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
drafthousefilms.com
Danish journalist Mads Brügger risked a lot more than just his career in making The Ambassador; he put his life on the line as well. “If you do it the way we will set you up to do it, you have a very high probability of success,” he is told by Colin Evans, who works for a company that can allegedly make anyone a diplomat of a diamond-rich African nation for the right price. “If you do it any other way, the best that you can hope for is to be arrested and go to jail and lose everything you’ve got. That’s the best you can hope for. The worst you can hope for is that you end up dead in a ditch in Africa.” Using his full name, Mads Johan Brügger Cortzen seeks to become a Liberian diplomat to the Central African Republic, meeting with powerful, important, and dangerous people on his fascinating journey, handing out “envelopes of happiness” filled with cash while claiming to want to build a match factory with the help of native pygmies. As Brügger’s story gets more and more ridiculous, he gains greater access, with soon only President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s signature necessary to achieve his absurd goal. An intriguing mix of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat and Ali G characters and controversial filmmaker and activist Michael Moore, Brügger, whose previous film, The Red Chapel, found him leading a bizarre experimental theater troupe into North Korea, goes about his business with a sly confidence, balancing the serious nature of the proceedings with humorous moments that threaten to reveal his ruse, but nobody seems to catch on as the money keeps flowing. (The film was financed by Lars Von Trier’s Zentropa studio.) Primarily using hidden cameras that he keeps rolling even after being told that filming is not allowed, Brügger employs his unique brand of what he calls “performative journalism,” a blend of performance art and investigative journalism that results in an outrageously entertaining film that exposes surprisingly blatant international corruption and has led to a firestorm of debate. The film opens August 29 at the IFC Center, with Brügger on hand for a Q&A following the 8:20 screenings on August 29 and 30.