Who payed the critics

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Blistering performances.

Damning indictment of King Leopold of Belgium who in a mad desire to make money for himself, not his kingdom, managed to get his hands on the Congo. At first it was a money suck but once the need for rubber came he became super wealthy. Ruling with and iron fist he practiced genocide on the population in order to squeeze as much money out of the country. Things got so bad that a call was made for him to be tried for his crimes. It didn't happen and Leopold was forced to use public relations to seem a great humanitarian instead of a genocidal megalomaniac.This solid documentary has upset many in Belgium who see this as besmirching the beloved memory of a past monarch. For my money the crimes, even if inflated, are hard to over look. I was shocked at just how bad it was. It's a damning indictment of the madness of a time not so long ago.For most of this films running time its a film that you fall into. You can't help but get carried away by the madness. The trouble is that the darkness of the tale is overwhelming at a certain point I started to shut off. Don't get me wrong its a great tale, its just a brutal and unhappy one and after 90 minutes you feel beaten up.A must see.

I highly recommend this documentary to anyone wishing to know about the forgotten African Holocaust. While the reenactments are at times rather incongruous and it employs some rather 'dramatic' devices betraying an historians' oath to be 'sine ira et studio' (having the king sit impassive in a mocked-up dock), they in no way detract from the remarkable story of savagery and, in the case of Morel and Casement in particular, heroism. It is a visual companion to Hochschild's 'King Leopold's Ghost', although it provides additional information such as the fate of the chief who brought one hundred and eighty-two long twigs and seventy-six smaller ones to represent that number of adults and children murdered by the A.B.I.R. Company in his district which I had been unable to find anywhere else. It also offers a solid number of other historians from the Congo itself as well as Belgium and the United Kingdom. The epilogue relating to Leopold's posthumous victory is particularly striking. www.tracesofevil.com

Leopold II was king of Belgium when he sought out countries for to colonise. The invention of a new type of tyre by a man called Dunlop made rubber a valuable commodity and Leopold found that the African nation of Congo offered him great riches and power. With great cruelty and greed, Leopold turned the country into one massive labour camp where the rubber was stripped with murder, amputation, mutilation and other unspeakable acts used to control and dominate the country. Between 1880 and 1920 the population of the Congo went from approximately 20,000,000 to closer to 10,000,000.Although I was not entirely convinced by the methods of delivered used throughout this film, it is hard to find it anything but fascinating because it is an intense period of recent history that many casual viewers will know much about. When you consider that few people in the West (and I mean "normal" people) knew the true scale of what happened in Rwanda until Hollywood helped put a spotlight on it, it is not unfair to assume that few will know about the Congo over a hundred years ago. I have visited Belgium and viewed some of the great buildings etc that were built by Leopold off the back of his income from Congo and there is nothing in that country that I saw to tell me anything of this dark history.And this is what makes the film so fascinating because it reveals the extent of this but also goes beyond to cover the way into Congo and how pressure from outside Belgium came to bare on Leopold as the truth started to come out into the world. The film does this very well because it would have been easy (and understandable) to have done nothing more than focus on the cruelty of the "civilisation" but just as shocking as how Belgium rewrote history just after the death of Leopold. The dramatisations were not always the strongest part of the film as sometimes they are damaged by the effect of having "Leopold" sitting there or having unnecessary music playing. However when the performance is good and it involves the individual just speaking without anything else to distract, it is powerful stuff. I have respect for Nick Fraser as one of the Storyville producers but as a narrator I'm sad to say that he is roundly poor – I just thought his voice was too flat and lacking distinction.Overall though it is a fascinating film thanks to the good job it does in regards delivering this forgotten history in a clear and concise way. Not perfect perhaps but for the casual viewer the content will more than cover for these weaknesses.

This excellent documentary tells one of the saddest stories of the late imperialist era, the genocide in the Belgian Congo. The growing need for rubber meant death for millions as the Belgian king himself set up world's most efficient production line for rubber. The cruel systematic murder was carried out for the greed of one man.The document is set up as an imaginary trial against king Leopold III played by an actor. The material of the prosecution is crushing but king Leopold listens to the horrific details of the mass murder of an entire nation without emotion, his face a mask of stone. This movie really stirred up emotions in me. How can things like these be forgotten? Even the Congolese themselves have forgotten their dark past. Some know of the great king that practically created the modern Congo, but few realize that he was personally responsible for the deaths of millions of their countrymen.