The Dictator Hunter
A Klaartje Quirijns Film
Directed by Klaartje Quirijns, Produced by Pieter van Huystee
Starring Reed Brody, Souleymane Guengueng
Documentary, 75 minutes. 2007.
This seminal film celebrates the efforts of victims, lawyers, and activists to bring Hissène Habré, the most notorious dictator ‘you’ve never heard of’, to justice for mass atrocities. Habré controlled the central African nation of Chad during the height of the Reagan era. Used as a bulwark by the United States against Libyan president Qaddafi, Habré profited from his American backing to systematically kill and torture ethnic groups throughout his country. He fled to Senegal in 1990, where he lived in peaceful luxury enjoying the spoils of his brutal reign. Peaceful luxury, that is, until his victims began to speak - and team up with one of the most extraordinary lawyers alive today.
Read the full review here.
Written and directed by Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Starring John Cho, Kal Penn
Comedy, 2008. 102 minutes.
This film follows on the heels of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004), a slapstick comedy about two pot smoking twenty-somethings searching for adventure and good times in New Jersey. Escape from Guantánamo Bay picks up ten minutes after the first film ends as the two friends decide to travel Amsterdam to find Harold’s new flame. Their plan quickly goes awry when Kumar is unable to resist lighting up his bong in the bathroom of the airplane and the two are arrested as terrorists. They embark on an international adventure full of raunchy highjinx, screwball antics, and all the rest.
Go to White Castle broke new ground in American cinema by featuring Korean-American and Indian-American main characters. Escape from Guantánamo Bay pushes a whole lot further. What matters about this fiction is that it brings human rights issues into mainstream discourse - in a very funny way.
Read the full review here.
