The Ambassador

A strange, enigmatic and decadent white European, who looks like a mixture of Henry Stanley and Karl Lagerfeld, arrives in the former French colony the Central African Republic (CAR) with diplomatic credentials to spearhead a diplomatic mission representing Liberia.

Working hand in hand with his charge d'affaires, a local man named Paul, our diplomat fights his way up the social ladder of this desperate and crumbling African country equipped only with a diplomatic passport and ‘envelopes of happiness’.

Officially he is there as a do-good rich business man to start a factory that produces matches – this, to employ locals and teach them how to make this simple piece of fire-making equipment. Unofficially he is there to gain access to CAR’s vast reserves of diamonds.

The Ambassador is a genre-breaking, tragic comedy about the bizarre and hidden world of African diplomacy, where gin-tonics flow on a daily basis and diamond hustlers and corrupt politicians run free. It conveys revealing insights into how the elite of an archetypical corrupt and devastated African country really works and functions. It deals with racial tensions in a refreshing new way and it will cause a shift in the way Africa is portrayed in future films and documentaries. In short, this is Africa, as ‘never seen before’.