Mads Brügger’ Double Trouble CPH:DOX pitch
Stalin had lots. Saddam Hussein employed several and his son Uday had one of his own too. Gaddafi kept his share and pock-marked Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega maintained four of them. Welcome to the world of body doubles and political decoys.
This is the subject for maverick Danish journalist and filmmaker Mads Brügger’s new documentary project Double Trouble, which he has been pitching at the CPH:FORUM this week.
Brügger (whose previous documentary The Mole exposed North Korean attempts to evade international sanctions) is on the hunt for as many of these living ‘devil’s doubles’ as he can find. The aim is to bring them all together for a “swanky stay at a luxury hotel where they will impersonate the strong men and dictators they used to be.”
In an interview with BDE, Brügger revealed further details about the project while also talking about the fall-out from The Mole – and why he believes that Kim Jong-Un hasn’t come looking for him just yet.
“Knock on wood, so far no response from Pyongyang except for a brief comment from the North Korean embassy in Stockholm, Sweden, something in the line of they consider the film to be bogus, a piece of propaganda.” Brügger says of the North Korean response to the film, which was made in top secrecy. “Clearly, they do not like the film.”
Brügger acknowledged that he remains very careful about personal security. He also pays tribute to the discretion of some of his backers, like Mandy Chang at BBC Storyville who were prepared to support the project in spite of the covert way it had to be made. “Mandy Chang knows how to keep a secret, that is for sure.”
Since The Mole was launched late last year, the uproar around it has gradually died down.
”I think, you know, if you compare The Mole to a film such as The Interview (2014), which brought Sony Pictures to its knees, what we do not do is that we do not ridicule the leadership. Furthermore, we are not suggesting you should bump off Kim Jong-Un. That is clearly what made the North Koreans extremely angry [about The Interview] and is not a territory that we enter.”
The Danish director suggested that the Covid pandemic had finally managed what western sanctions had been trying to achieve for many years, namely “to seal the country off completely.”
During the pandemic, North Korean trade with China ground to a halt.
“They have had a lot of problems on their plate, the leadership in Pyongyang, so I think dealing with a film made in Scandinavia, far away from Pyongyang, is of lesser importance – which is great for me I would say!”
The Mole is likely to burrow its way up to the surface again when it finally reaches North American audiences. (As yet, no distribution has been confirmed).
“In my mind, it is a film which is ready-made for a US audience,” Brügger said of the documentary which is already one of the best-selling films in the history of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, having been licensed to over 20 territories.
Now, having spent months stuck in Copenhagen because of the pandemic, the globe-trotting director is turning his attention to Double Trouble. The idea comes from a book he read years ago about Saddam Hussein’s double. “I read a lot of history books…I have discovered that other strong men and dictators had doubles [too].”
Brügger is currently on the hunt for surviving impersonators for his film. One of Stalin’s last living doubles gave an interview in 2014 and may still be alive. He is also interested in the doubles of lesser dictators, for example in some of the former Soviet republics.
“Once you have found them [the doubles] and struck a deal with them, in my mind, then it is ready-made. I think it will be enormously interesting and visually very captivating and entertaining to see them all together in one place – and then carefully exploring their memories of what they did as doubles for their former employees,” Brügger makes his pitch.
The documentary, which the director says could work either as a feature doc or as a series, will be produced by his regular collaborator, Peter Engel, of Wingman Media. “He (Engel) is enormously important. Most likely, I wouldn’t have ventured into documentary filmmaking without Peter. I really enjoy working with him and he fully understands what I aim to achieve.”
As always with Brügger’s work, the new doc will come laced with plenty of humour. “Part of it comes from my own idiosyncrasies and the way I tend to tell stories,” he says of the comic undertow in even his most serious docs. “When you are dealing with something very dark and disturbing, as [documentaries] often do, I think that comic relief is important…especially if you’re dealing with long formats, you do need a laugh once in a while.”
The director has other projects in development but remains tight-lipped about them. He also acknowledges that it can be frustrating when his films like Cold Case Hammarskjöld reveal details of racism, violence and political corruption – and yet the mainstream media doesn’t take the bait or doesn’t want to engage with the conspiracy theories he has managed to stand up.
“I do understand why, because following up on the leads which are in the film [Cold Case] is quite difficult, time consuming and expensive. If you fully want to scrutinise an organisation such as the South African Institute For Maritime Research, you need boots on the ground,” he says of the white supremacist organisation embroiled in a fiendish plot to spread HIV to black Africans. “Compared to what else is going on in the world, it is more easy to ignore.”
However, he is hopeful someone will eventually follow in his footsteps. In the meantime, his focus is on the Forum and convincing potential backers that Double Trouble will turn out to be a winner.
As for CPH:DOX, Brügger congratulates the organisers on how they’ve re-invented the festival as an online event. “I think they’re doing a fine job with that,” he declares.
