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| 'Truthfully an incredibly lie' reads the translated tagline for Morten Hartz Kapler's AFR |
AFR feigns to tell the story of the former Danish prime minister, (now general secretary for NATO), right-wing liberalist Anders Fogh Rasmussen; the film is a mockumentary 'account/biopic' of Rasmussen's fictional death in a bomb assassination carried out by his crazed, radically left-wing (also wholly fictional) gay lover. This fatal end becomes the framing device for AFR.
As part of the film's provocative form, countless Danish and international politician source interviews, historical footage from political summits, genocides and everything in between is used in the narrative's ruthless, self-serving manipulation of facts.
The mock portrait of Rasmussen goes on to become the story of a man, whose ideals of a better, more free and equal world leads him to stand opposed to the whole Western society, when he demands better treatment of Africa. And it might have been a good and moving story premise for an exciting fictional drama, - had it not all been a complete falsity posing as truth.
Feature-debuting co-writer/director/co-star Morten Hartz Kapler (Sisyfos Verden (1997, short)) himself plays the gay murderer. He co-wrote AFR with Allan Milter Jakobsen.
In addition to being hard to stand, the film may be a rip-off of the British mockumentary, Gabriel Range's Death of a President (2006), in which George W. Bush is assassinated.
As a fake documentary, AFR is clumsy and pointless, besides being immoral in its use of real people and incidents.
Related post:
2007 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2007 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
The unsubtitled trailer for AFR, in which you can get a sense of the director's use of people of all kinds to serve his narrative
Cost: Unknown
Box office: 285k $
= Uncertain (but likely a big flop)
[AFR premiered 31 January (International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands) and runs 85 minutes. The film sold 23,792 tickets in its production country Denmark, accounting for 277k $ (97.2 % of the gross). If made on a very low 1 mil. DKK budget, the film would rank as a big flop. The remaining 8k $ were grossed in Greece. The film was well-received by Danish film critics. It was nominated for the Nordic Council Film Prize. Kapler has not acted in films or directed since; he has returned as executive producer on two little seen projects many years later. 457 IMDb users have given AFR a 5.2/10 average rating.]
What do you think of AFR?
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