01/02/2006

Screened in official competition at the Rotterdam Festival, Land of the blind though a work of fiction, does not miss the opportunity to make references to real political situations.

In an imaginary country and time, the terrible dictator Junior rules, as passionate about cinema as he is about torture. Joe is a prison warden and strikes up a friendship with one of the inmates, writer Thorne, who belongs to the revolutionary movement. Convinced by the latter’s ideology, Joe will help him overturn power without imagining for a second that yesterday’s victim could become today’s executioner. "I wanted to show that we have to think for ourselves not follow someone’s ideology " explained the director Robert Edwards who was making his first film. Born in Germany, Edwards served in the US army and participated in the first Gulf War in Iraq before moving into documentaries. This first fiction film could be set for the present or in the past, in Europe or Africa, Russia or Latin America. Each has seen real tyrants and false heroes. And that is the strength of this story which, without using an historical character in particular, denounces all and encourages reflection. The interpretation is done with menacing conviction, with Tom Hollander as the mad dictator, Ralph Fiennes as a credible manipulated civilian and Donald Sutherland as the rebel dictator. The references are numerous, from reality and fiction, from Castro to Hussein, from Hitler to Chaplin’s dictator, and the assassination of Marat, "friend of the people".

This Anglo-American co-production brings together Avnet/Kerner Productions (Jon Avnet) and Bauer Martinez Studios (Philippe Martinez).

(Translated from French)