General Idi Amin Dada (1974) on Netflix
NR19741h 30mBiographyDocumentaryWar
A foreign film crew is granted access to Uganda's ruler, General Idi Amin Dada. He lets it follow his Cabinet meetings, troop reviews and his plans for Israel.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb7.3/102,145 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes79%
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Plot summary
General Idi Amin Dada, who rules Uganda, agrees to let a foreign crew interview him and film him at work. In those interviews he speaks about his ties to Arab nations and his stated intention to destroy Israel, along with his economic thinking and his assessment of Nixon, Kissinger and other heads of government. The crew watches him rebuke his ministers at a cabinet meeting. He runs a war-game exercise that rehearses an invasion of Israel and stages a mock assault on a hill that stands for the Golan Heights. He supervises the Ugandan paratrooper school, rides a boat through a wildlife park, performs with a jazz band at a formal dinner, visits a village and addresses a gathering of Ugandan physicians.
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about General Idi Amin Dada (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- When Idi Amin demanded further cuts, Barbet Schroeder refused; Amin responded by rounding up almost 200 French citizens in Uganda and confining them to a hotel, their release conditional on Schroeder's compliance. Schroeder made the cuts, replacing 2½ minutes with title cards crediting the gaps to Amin, and restored the footage after Amin's fall from power.
- Barbet Schroeder and cameraman Nestor Almendros were given unprecedented access to Idi Amin's daily life, but many events in the film, such as a garrison town turning out en masse to greet him, were staged for their benefit; Amin himself directed the cameraman, once shouting to film a helicopter.
- Under his agreement with Idi Amin, Barbet Schroeder made two versions of the documentary: an hour-long cut delivered directly to Amin and released in Uganda, and a second version shown only outside Uganda with an extra half-hour of footage and narration.
- According to Barbet Schroeder, Idi Amin asked Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi to send his agents in Britain to watch the film and write down a full transcript of its contents.
