General Idi Amin Dada (1974)

A documentary on the military dictator of Africa's Uganda.

Director:

Barbet Schroeder

Stars:

Idi Amin, Fidel Castro, Golda Meir

Cast

Cast overview:
Idi Amin	...	Himself (as Idi Amin Dada)

Storyline

Uganda's dictator, General Idi Amin Dada, accepts a foreign crew's request to interview and film him. He talks to the camera about his outreach to Arab nations, his goal of eradicating Israel, his views on economic policy, and his views of Nixon, Kissinger, and other world leaders. We also see him dressing down his ministers at a cabinet meeting (two weeks after this meeting, the foreign minister, whom Amin criticizes here, is murdered), supervising a war-game simulation of an invasion of Israel, visiting a village, and addressing a conclave of Ugandan physicians.

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Plot Keywords:

dictator | uganda | idi amin | military | interview | 

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Taglines:

An Authorized Portrait by Barbet Schroeder

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Genres:

Documentary

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Official Sites:

Criterion Collection

Country:

France Switzerland

Language:

English Swahili French

Release Date:

30 August 1976 (USA)

Also Known As:

A Self Portrait

Filming Locations:

Kampala, Uganda

Company Credits

Production Co:

Le Figaro,Mara Films,Télévision Rencontre

Technical Specs

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Quotes

Idi Amin: [a Telegram to Julius Nyerere, President of Tanzania] I want to assure you that I love you very much, and if you had been a woman I would have considered marrying you although your head is full of grey hairs, but as you are a man that possibility does not arise.

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Connections

Referenced in Barbet Schroeder Interview (2002)

User Reviews

The personification of ultimate evil

I saw the film on rental DVD which is out of print and very difficult to get ahold of if no out of print VHS copy is available. This is a compelling and fascinating documentary on the former and ousted Uganda dictator Idi Amin Dada who thought it would be ideal as a positive public relations tool to use a documentary film to voice his views. It proved the opposite as you watch the film that maintains truth and objectivity while letting Idi expound his opinions to inform the viewers of his views and justify his decisions as the despotic ruler of Uganda between 1971 and 1979.

It's an amazingly candid documentary about a candid dictator who at first seems like a nice, jollying person to hang out in the beginning of the film but turns out to be a perverted-beyond-humanity, murderous, blood-thirsty schizophrenic psychopath as an illiterate military commander-turned-dictator thirsting and gnawing on bestial cruelty and bloodshed as a stronghold on ultimate power that is a toxin of the mind, heart and soul. The documentary barely shows any atrocity except at the beginning, but the way Idi engages the documentary crew with his inane, egotistical, delusional and bizarre ramblings on-camera should ice-chill the spine of every conscientious viewer who paid attention to watch this historically important film since Idi Amin Dada recently died from multiple organ failure in a Saudi Arabia hospital in August 2003.

For a brief but detailed account of Idi Amin Dada's sheer scope of violence and brutality under the Dada regime, I recommend "The Most Evil Men and Women in History" by Miranda Twiss available only at Barnes & Nobles. It astounds me that one of the worst and most barbaric dictators of the 20th century lived to be an old man without prosecution for crimes against humanity.

Without Barbet Schroeder's brutally honest documentary, we would not be aware of what was inside the warped mind of Idi Amin to justify the horror bestowed upon the victims in the wrong place at the wrong time from all directions in Uganda under his coup d'etat rule.

Truly, we have the real Hannibal Lecter on film and that is General Amin. A rare film that's so bone-chilling it's scary just listening to Amin's speeches with his strange, barely contorted facial expression - and it's in real-life. The embodiment of evil personified by Amin on film.