The Ambassador

Danish journalist Mads Brügger's 2011 documentary answers a question by experiment: can a diplomatic title be bought? Brügger pays a brokerage a hundred and thirty five thousand dollars and acquires the standing of Liberia's representative to the Central African Republic. He then travels there, announces a plan to build a match factory as a front, and moves into the diamond trade that was his real object. Using hidden cameras, the film documents how the sale of titles, customs exemptions and undeclared diamond flows fit together. The method is open to argument: Brügger deceives the people in front of him, draws them in, and makes that part of his own narrative. The Liberian government threatened legal action after its release. Who it's for: viewers who want documentaries that put both journalistic method and Africa's resource economy up for debate. Who it's not for: anyone who finds an approach built on hidden recording and deception ethically unacceptable.