Cold Case Hammarskjöld
Feature length film Completed 2018
Director
Mads Brugger
Doc Society helped with
Development
Production
If this really is true, if The Secretary of The United Nations really was assassinated by a sinister nexus of big powers working in collusion, it could be the most important and shocking story ever told.
It is John Le Carré meets Graham Greene meets Robert Ludlum, i.e. the most intense political thriller possible. The geopolitical reverberation of Dag Hammarskjöld's death in the jungles of Ndola in present day Zambia can still be heard and felt today, yet somehow his untimely death has always been overshadowed by the clear cut assassinations of iconoclastic heads of states, such as Gandhi, John F. Kennedy and Oluf Palme. But now a critical mass has assembled itself, and the time to make an indisputable argument for the likelihood, that Dag Hammarskjöld’s death was not a simple plane crash – which several investigations have concluded – is ripe. Now, thanks to Göran Björkdahl, a Swedish man working for Sweden's national foreign service in Africa, who began investigating the case himself, local, African stories can be told, and these statements lead to a whole other and much more disturbing conclusion about what caused the death of Dag Hammarskjöld. At the same time, Göran Björkdahl, working with other researchers, has data mined archives at universities and ministries around Europe and elsewhere, unearthing documents and witnesses that underpin his thesis; Dag Hammarskjöld was murdered. Following in the footsteps of Göran Björkdahl, from Stockholm, to London, Moscowand Washington, to the jungles of Ndola and ballistic laboratories of Los Angeles, not to forget tracking down a sinister private intelligence network once headquartered in South Africa, "Cold Case Hammarskjold" will present itself as a captivating and intriguing political thriller, with the ice-cold and mathematical structure of a perfect logarithm.
Crew
Mads Brugger
Director
Born 1972, Denmark. Journalist with his own distinctive methods. Has gone undercover and infiltrated various milieus. Engaged by the national broadcaster DR in 1996, where he has created off-beat talk shows and satirical docu series such as »The Red Chapel«. Brügger’s latest documentary “The Ambassador” was selected for competition at IDFA 2011 and Sundance, and to this he also received the Dreyer award, which celebrates outstanding cinematic achievement.
Producer: Peter Engel, Nadja Nørgaard Kristensen
Production Company: Electric Parc
It is impossible in this paranoid-making era to watch Cold Case and not be made to feel uneasy by the secrets it unlocks and the human aptitude for evil that it exposes.
The New Republic
Sept. 3, 2019
Six years in the making, Cold Case Hammarskjöld is by far [Mads] Brügger's most ambitious and engrossing documentary.
Austin Chronicle
Aug. 23, 2019
It's impossible to emerge from this film without being shaken to your core. Mission accomplished: Mind blown.
Washington Post
Aug. 21, 2019
One thing is certain: If he's right about this one, he will have earned that pith helmet.
Time Out
Aug. 16, 2019
You may not leave this movie satisfied, but you will be appalled - and chilled to the bone.
Los Angeles Times
Aug. 15, 2019
"Cold Case Hammarskjold" is finally poised unsatisfyingly between an explosive exposé and a self-conscious put-on.
New York Times
Aug. 15, 2019
There's nothing wrong with documentarians taking center stage in the drama of their own research, as... Werner Herzog demonstrates. The trouble with this ploy, however, is that you have to be Herzog, or a figure of comparable charisma, to pull it off.
The New Yorker
Aug. 9, 2019
A funny, gripping, crazed take on the mystery investigation drama.
The Hollywood Reporter
Jan. 27, 2019
