Moloch Tropical

• Director: Raoul Peck
• Writer: Jean-René Lemoine, Raoul Peck
• Cast: Zinedine Soualem, Sonia Rolland, Mireille Métellus, Nicole Dogue, Jimmy Jean-Louis
• Theatrical Release Date: September 12, 2009
• On The Web IMDB Entry

Synopsis: In an audacious stroke, Raoul Peck claims Alexander Sokurov's Moloch as his own. Transplanting the Russian director's unsettling mountain idyll between Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun from Bavaria to the green heat of Haiti, Peck tucks a searing critique of absolute power within the most elegant chamber drama. It's a masterful move. As it happens, Haiti has a castle even more impressive than Sokurov's, high atop a mountain outside Port-au-Prince. Built from massive stone blocks that seem to rise up out of the jungle, it is a remnant of colonial power and debauchery hiding in the mists. Peck uses this setting to increasingly shattering effect. It is from this height that the President rules. Styling himself an imperial monarch, he rattles paranoid around the enormous castle, as isolated and fragile as one of Shakespeare's mad kings. Obsessed equally with what the television tells him and the comely shape of his new maid, he enforces rules with an erratic terror common to many despots. [Synopsis courtesy of TIFF]