Dag Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash on September 17, 1961 while traveling to negotiate a ceasefire in Katanga. Danish journalist and documentarian Mads Brügger concludes that had he lived, the second Secretary-General of the United Nations’ mandate that Africans live their lives in full independence would have put an end to the colonial chokehold. What he uncovered during the six-year journey to reach that conclusion will both shock and revulse. Not alone in his enterprise, Brügger is here joined by Swedish private investigator Göran Björkdahl, whose father was a UN diplomat when visiting the crash site in the ‘70s. Björkdahl found a slab of metal when moving his father into a nursing home: a bullet-stippled plate alleged to have come from Hammarskjöld’s plane. From that day forward, defrosting the cold case became an obsession. The sheer volume of names and faces thrown our way can become a tad daunting at times. But as far afield as many of the subplots take us, Brügger's chilling documentary thriller never loses sight of its subject. (2019) — Scott Marks
This movie is not currently in theaters.