Image Création

This film is the result of more than two years of work tracking down archive material and witnesses close to Mobutu in Africa, Europe and the U.S. More than 950 hours of footage have been seen by the world. Among the 104 hours selected as the basis for this film, are 30 hours of archives recently discovered in Kinshasa and never before released. Completing these exceptional documents, are more than 50 hours of interviews with those close to the former president and the events surrounding his reign, conducted by the director in Kinshasa, Brussels, Paris and Washington. Like a vast historical puzzle, this film pieces together the tragic history of a country, and its self-styled leader - the dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, "King of Zaïre".

Composed exclusively of the footage recorded by Leo Hurwitz during the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961, A Specialist is a courtroom drama painting the portait of a zealous bureaucrat who has immense respect for the Law and hierarchy, a police official responsible for the elimination of several million people, a modern criminal.

When 12-year-old Tonin's teacher announces that he is looking for volunteers to house one of several orphan African refugees for a month during their visit to Paris, the exuberent, well-meaning youth immediately offers his own abode. His classmates cheer and he feels happy until he broaches the subject with his parents. Daniel, the boy's father is delighted by his son's humanitarianism, but still says no. Not wanting to lose face at school, Tonin decides to take the visitor anyway and just keep him hidden for the next few weeks. This family-oriented French comedy follows his efforts to keep his new African guest, Moussa, a secret.

A documentary that invites us to discover the strange path led by the explorer-ethnographer Marquis de Wavrin who, in the 1920s and 1930s, made ethnographic films in several countries of Latin America.