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DARWIN'S NIGHTMARE
Directed, Written by & Director of Photography: Hubert Sauper.
Produced by: Edouard Mauriat, Antonin Svoboda, Martin Gschlacht, Hubert Toint & Hubert Sauper.
Edited by: Denise Vindevogel.
Released by: Celluloid Dreams/International Film Circuit.
Language: English & French with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: France/Austria/Belgium. 107 min. Not Rated.

Tanzania is doomed in director Hubert Sauper's composite of conundrums, but contrary to Charles Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest, here nature has run amuck with the victor eating even its own. The natural ecosystem of Lake Victoria, the world's largest tropical lake, has been wiped out by the predatory Nile perch, introduced there 40 to 50 years ago. This fish, in turn, has become the country's largest export to the European Union. According to the film, two million white people eat it every day while 50 percent of the 34 million Tanzanians live on less than a dollar a day. Because the local population can't afford the fillets, they instead get rotting scraps for food. Cargo planes from Europe land, suspiciously empty, on air fields littered with aircraft wreckage. Before departing with tons of fish, the Eastern European pilots are interviewed carousing with their $10-a-night Tanzanian girlfriends. Meanwhile, AIDS devastates the fishing villages. Even after reflecting on those who have died of the disease, a reverend declares, "Condoms are dangerous because they are a sin." One crisis follows another in this episodic documentary: drug abuse among street kids, the drought in central Tanzania, and the surreptitious arms trade.

Malnourished children, adolescent boys sniffing glue, piles of maggot-filled fish carcasses: there are enough indelible images, let alone subject matter, for more than one film. Part cinéma vérité and part investigative journalism, Sauper’s film presents one obstacle after another. Relief efforts by international agencies, like the United Nations, are only mentioned in passing. Health care, debt relief, the country's internal politics or even the viewer's accountability are not touched upon (granted, the film has enough on its hands). The film is almost patronizing in its immutable bleakness. It's not enough to only point out, however powerfully, these crises. The only moment in which there's a glimmer of hope is at the end. A young woman stares out in the distance as a plane flies off into the horizon towards Europe, implying one way for Tanzanians to save their country is to leave it. Kent Turner
August 3, 2005