Cold Case Hammarskjöld

Mads Brügger's 2019 documentary investigates the death of the United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld, whose plane came down in Northern Rhodesia in 1961. Brügger and the Swedish researcher Göran Björkdahl pursue the claim that the crash was an assassination, and the trail takes them to a secretive South African organisation called SAIMR. The second half arrives at a far graver allegation: that the organisation used health clinics in the eighties and nineties to spread HIV among the Black population. That claim is the most contested thing about the film; specialists say the method is not practically possible, and it was criticised because witnesses' accounts shifted once the cameras were running. Brügger places himself inside the story and turns suspicion into a style. It won a directing award at Sundance. Who it's for: viewers interested in investigative documentary and postcolonial African history. Who it's not for: anyone looking for verified information; the film's allegations are not proven.