I met Danish journalist and filmmaker Mads Brügger in the lobby of the Mariott hotel at the Sundance Film Festival this past January, just to congratulate him on the triumphant documentary he had just screened at the fest.
Brügger’s “Cold Case Hammarskjöld” follows the story of United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld and the mystery behind his death following a mysterious plane crash in 1961. Was the crash actually meant as an assassination of Hammarskjöld? By investigating the “tragedy,” Brügger stumbles upon a rabbit hole of conspiracies, including the CIA spreading AIDS all over Africa back in the ‘80s. Brügger blends different kinds of documentary storytelling and blurs the lines between journalist and agitator. In my review, I wrote, “Brügger’s movie plays mostly like a real-time thriller, to be honest, but whatever hybrid of non-fiction you want to categorize ‘Cold Case Hammarskjöld,’ it’s nothing short of groundbreaking.”
“Cold Case Hammarskjöld” will be in theaters on August 16.