Barbet Schroeder

General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait

General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait

In 1974, Barbet Schroeder went to Uganda to make a film about Idi Amin, the country’s ruthless, charismatic dictator. Three years into a murderous regime that would be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ugandans, Amin prepared a triumphal greeting for the filmmakers, staging rallies, military maneuvers, and cheery displays of national pride, and envisioning the film as an official portrait to adorn his cult of personality. Schroeder, however, had other ideas, emerging with a disquieting, caustically funny brief against Amin, in which the dictator’s own endless stream of testimony—by turns charming, menacing, and nonsensical—serves as the most damning evidence. A revelatory tug-of-war between subject and filmmaker, General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait is a landmark in the art of documentary and an appalling study of egotism in power.

Film Info

  • France
  • 1974
  • 90 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.37:1
  • English
  • Spine #153

DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New, restored 2K digital transfer, supervised by director Barbet Schroeder, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Interviews from 2001 and 2017 with Schroeder
  • New interview with journalist and author Andrew Rice about Idi Amin’s regime
  • PLUS: An essay by critic J. Hoberman

    New cover by Eric Skillman

Purchase Options

DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New, restored 2K digital transfer, supervised by director Barbet Schroeder, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Interviews from 2001 and 2017 with Schroeder
  • New interview with journalist and author Andrew Rice about Idi Amin’s regime
  • PLUS: An essay by critic J. Hoberman

    New cover by Eric Skillman
General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait
Cast
Idi Amin Dada
Himself
Credits
Director
Barbet Schroeder
Producer
Charles-Henri Favrod
Producer
Jean-Pierre Rassam
Executive producer
Jean-François Chauvel
Cinematography
Nestor Almendros
Editing
Denise de Casabianca
Sound
Alain Sempé
Assistant camera
Jean-Claude Rivière
Assistant editor
Dominique Auvray
Sound mixer
Antoine Petitjean
Music
Idi Amin Dada

Current

General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait: A Tyrant for Our Times
General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait: A Tyrant for Our Times
“He’s joking all the time if he feels he has an audience,” Barbet Schroeder said of Idi Amin in a 1976 New York Post interview.I think we know the type.Ugandan dictator Amin, the subject of Schroeder’s 1974 documentary General …

By J. Hoberman

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