The Great Dictators # 05 – Hissène Habré

The Great Dictators # 05 | Wednesday| February 10 | Films starts 20:00 hrs

‘THE DICTATOR HUNTER’

Documentary by Klaartje Quirijns, 2007, 75 min.

“If you kill one person, you go to jail. If you kill 40 people, they put you in an insane asylum. But if you kill 40, 000 people, you get a comfortable exile with a bank account in another country, and that’s what we want to change here.” – Reed Brody, Human Rights Watch

He hunts dictators for a living as a lawyer for Human Rights Watch. For seven years, Brody has been chasing one former dictator in particular: Hissène Habré, the former leader of Chad, who is charged with killing thousands of his own countrymen in the 1980s. Now Habré lives in Senegal where Brody is attempting to have him brought to trial or extradited.

In The Dictator Hunter we follow Brody over the course of two suspenseful years as he travels through Africa, Europe and the United States. He conducts diplomacy like the chess games he plays with his son. But in his work, the chess pieces are politicians, journalists and judges that Brody positions against his opponent. The Dictator Hunter shows what it takes for one man to break the cycle of impunity…

Director Klaartje Quirijns has a keen instinct for exploring international politics through the eyes of memorable characters. Her previous film The Brooklyn Connection tells one man’s story of building a guerrilla army. He did it by buying high-powered sniper rifles weapons that are legally purchased in the US.

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THE GREAT DICTATORS
Monthly film night at De Verdieping, the cultural project space of TrouwAmsterdam, focussing on ‘the vanity of evil’. Each night centers around one absolute ruler, both past and present, and shows how tyrants and populist leaders are (re)presented in (documentary) films.

With thanks to the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst.